Book Description
This book focuses on the collaborative illustrated volumes published during the Harlem Renaissance, in which African Americans used written and visual texts to shape ideas about themselves and to redefine African American identity. Anne Elizabeth Carroll argues that these volumes show how participants in the movement engaged in the processes of representation and identity formation in sophisticated and largely successful ways. Though they have received little scholarly attention, these volumes constitute an important aspect of the cultural production of the Harlem Renaissance. Word, Image, and the New Negro marks the beginning of a long-overdue recovery of this legacy and points the way to a greater understanding of the potential of texts to influence social change.
Book Description
Fashion has played a major part in the elevation of footballers to iconic status in recent years, whether it be George Best’s famous clothes shops or David Beckham’s unique dress sense. This is the first book to explore the link between football and fashion in both players and fans.
Customer Reviews:
Great book!.......2004-12-08
If you love Football, and like looking the business when going to the Football and ever wondered where all the terrace fashions came from, then you will love this book.
A really interesting read with some classic pictures.
Book Description
One of the original ZAP artists reinvents a cult classic novel.
This is a graphic novel adaptation of the notorious 1930s cult novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham, illustrated by legendary underground cartoonist Spain Rodriguez. The story is a study of the lowest depths of showbiz and its sleazy inhabitants and environs, the dark, shadowy world of a second rate carnival filled with cheap hustlers, scheming grifters, and Machiavellian femmes fatales.
Gresham was born in Baltimore in 1909, but grew up in New York. Nightmare Alley was highly influenced by the freaks and sideshows he routinely observed at Coney Island as a child. The dark side of carnival life is the world of Nightmare Alley, deeply rooted in early film noir and the hard-boiled books of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain. Rodriguez's illustrations complement Gresham's dark, brooding, cynical and complex world perfectly—the rich imagery of Gresham's prose is perfectly realized by Rodriguez's brush. The book depicts the rise of Stan Carlisle from a carnival mentalist to a successful "spiritualist," preying on the rich and gullible matrons of society, to his eventual fall and total disintegration.
Customer Reviews:
Dark Americana.......2003-05-20
A noir classic that has received classic treatment under the pen of Spain Rodriguez, one of America's foremost under/above ground cartoonists. I first became fascinated by this book & William L. Gresham, by realizing that his ex-wife Joy, became a Christian and took off to England with the intention of meeting that best known Christian apologist of the 20th century, CS Lewis. They later married in the midst of her terminal illness from cancer. What would have made Joy flee the communist esoteric pleasures of living with Mr. Gresham to the arms of a rather sexless University Don?
This is the great novel of the American underbelly. A society that has it's own culture both inside and out of the norm. I often see "Nightmare Alley" as the progenitor to the later fantasies of Wm. Burroughs. The grotesque & arabesque of the seemingly mundane American landscape is explored with a naked eye in this. And this Fantgraphics edition is your best bet for becoming aquainted to this lesser known masterpiece.
Disappointing adaptation of a fine novel.......2003-05-11
As a fan of the original novel and the film, I was very much looking forward to this graphic novel (or comic book) version. Unfortunately, this misses the mark. Rodriguez's style, which is great for "underground" comix, doesn't feel right for this material: everything looks sleazy, which is fine for the Carnival stuff, but the overall look needs a veneer of class as the main character's odyssey advances. The biggest problem is that there is not enough visual storytelling here. Some of the scams that are clear in the novel are completely incomprehensible here; if you've never read the novel you won't understand some of them (I had to go back to the novel myself to refresh my memory). The page layouts are basically all the same -- 4 equal size panels per page -- so there's no use of the medium to create interesting layouts and compositions to enhance the story. Small panel closeups and smaller multiple panels to break up incredibly long speeches would have helped tremendously. Everything is line drawings -- no use of wash and few attempts to create interesting lighting. The novel is considered "noir," and it would have benefited from a Frank Miller or Alex Maleev type of approach. If you've never read the novel, pick up the excellent collection "American Noir: Crime Novels of the 30's and 40's" and read it in its original form. This adaptation just doesn't work.
Grotesque, Repulsive, and Fascinating.......2002-06-07
Although largely forgotten today, Gresham's NIGHTMARE ALLEY was one of the great bestsellers of the 1940s--a grotesque tale of the rise of a Stanton Carlisle, a carny worker who moves up from bilking rubes at a traveling ten-in-one show to become a fake spiritualist bilking the rich and famous in an church elaborately rigged to support his fake senances. But success is fleeting, and Stan falls prey to the very insecurities that have driven him to success. When it comes, his fall has all the horror of being dropped into a blast furnace.
Gresham writes in a tough-voiced pulp fiction tone that lingers over the most unsavory aspects of the story--sometimes to the point of nausea--and the result is a harsh vision of the world as a "nightmare alley," a one-way run with unseen hounds hell after you and death when you meet the brick wall at the end. The characters are memorable: the glib-tongued Stan, embroiled in his own Freudian hell; the hardknocks but likeable Zeena, a carny psychic who starts Stan on his career; the pretty but stupid Molly, who becomes Stan's unwilling partner in crime; and, always lurking somewhere in the background, the carny geek, the ultimate portrait in degredation and desperation, a monsterous man-made grotesque whose image frames the novel.
The novel is deliberately disorienting, and each new section of the book is heralded by the use of a Tarot card to remarkable effect. NIGHTMARE ALLEY is powerful stuff, and it shouldn't be read on an empty stomach. Recommended, but brace yourself: when you pick up the book you'll find yourself on an express elevator, and it's straight down all the way.
Cool Thriller.......2000-06-30
Gresham writes a suspenseful and "not so nice" story about Stanton Carlisle -- a young man who starts his working career in freak / carnival show. Stanton and his friends travel around the country bilking people into believing that Stan can predict the future. Gresham reveals the tricks of the trade as he shows how fortunetellers and mind readers conduct their business.
Stanton wants the big time action and he has the ability to go far. He is glib, charismatic and a skilled cold fortuneteller. After marrying fellow carnival worked Molly, he and she go to work acquiring larger targets. After becoming a mail-order minister, they conduct seances and allow rich people to communicate with the dead. Stanton and Molly and rewarded handsomely. However, even that isn't enough as Stan pushes his luck and goes after a major capitalist in order to clear huge amounts of money.
The gritty writing is similar James M. Cain's (Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice) and is unafraid to reveal the characters' seedier nature. The format of the book is also clever -- showing Stanton's rise to power (and ultimate demise) through the use of tarot cards at the start of each chapter. My only complaint was that it was sometimes hard to follow. I found that at the start of almost every chapter I felt a sense of disorientation until I figured out what was going on. The continuity was weak. However, I liked the book tremendously -- especially when it revealed Stanton's ruses.
Mister, I Was Made for It.......2000-04-11
The excellent movie with Tyrone Power isn't currently available -- too bad. It was written by the greatest Hollywood writer, Jules Furthman, who trimmed away some of Gresham's more baroque touches and flatulent moralizing (and gave it a great last line, until Darryl Zanuck softened the ending). As for the book itself, it's a blistering portrait of hubris and its consequences, and some of the writing (the early description of the geek at work) is as tough and uncompromising as any American writing ever. An unforgettable experience.
Average customer rating:
- No wonder he killed himself!
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Nightmare Alley
Manufacturer: Rinehart & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GK70GQ |
Customer Reviews:
No wonder he killed himself!.......2007-02-13
The author of this book killed himself shortly after it was written. No wonder. It's an incredibly misanthropic story of a "minder reader" hustler/carney, who might or might not have murdered someone. What's clear though, is he's no good, out for himself, and...
Well, there's one scene that gives him some humanity... hustling out of getting caught by the cops, and saving a fellow human (and "colored guy" to boot!) in the process.
The book is loosely based around the tarot deck, and the author certainly knew his stuff. The writings isn't great, but it's good. Parts-- mainly internal monologues-- are tinged with genius. It's a worthwhile read, but don't expect to be uplifted!
--Mykel
Customer Reviews:
The virgin edition.......2005-03-13
Nightmare Alley presents a frightening insider's perspective of the freaks-and-geeks carnival circuit of pre-television days. It became a hit movie starring Tyrone Power as the tragic hero. It is now available as a comic book that I have not seen, but which other reviewers who have compared the comic and the original did not praise. The original is incomparable. Anyone with even a passing interest in show business history will find it as engrossing and entertaining as the lost world it accurately describes.
Product Description
Long, 35 page, introduction by Richard Garnett. Red cloth. Rbrtyman's Library.
Average customer rating:
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Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley
Brendan Mullen
Manufacturer: Gingko Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Photography
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
Photo Essays
| Photography
| Arts & Photography
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ASIN: 1584232900 |
Product Description
A Visual Recollection of the Masque Club, L.A. (1977-79)
A stunning visual recollection of a classic, vanished moment on the Los Angeles pop culture landscape of the late 70s that included punk rock, politics, graffiti, unique fashion and art, LIVE AT THE MASQUE is more than 300 pages in color and B&W, painstakingly compiled and edited by Masque founder-author Brendan Mullen with editor-publisher Roger Gastman, founder of R77 Books and editor-publisher of Swindle quarterly.
Previously unpublished photos, posters, flyers for bands who got their start there like X, Go Go's, Dickies, Bags, Eyes, Black Randy & the Metro Squad, Plugz, Skulls, Controllers and the Deadbeats leap out of every page, many of them in full color. Also included are pre-Masque bands who played there to ever-expanding audiences, namely the Alleycats, Zeros, Dils, Screamers, Germs, Weirdos, Avengers, Black Flag, Mau Mau's, and many more pioneers of the early West Coast punk/hardcore scenes.
Photography by: Michael Yampolsky, Frank Gargani, Eric Blum, Melanie Nissen, Ann Summa, Al Flipside, Dawn Wirth, Gaby Berlin, Donna Santisi, Jenny Lens, Alain Saint-Alix, Jules Bates, Carol Torres, Bibbe Hansen, Jill Ash, Jill Von Hoffman, Ladd McPartland, Scott Lindgren, Philomena Winstanley, Kerry Colonna, Herb Wrede, Chris D., David Guilburt and others.
Designers: David Allen, Judith Bell, Bob Biggs, David Brown, Exene Cervenka, Chris D., Margaret Guzman, Larry Dammit Hammett, Havoc, Lux Interior, Tony Kinman, Paul Lesperance, Paul Picasso, Tom Recchion, Cliff Roman, Brendan Mullen...
Mullen says: Even if it never gets a star on the Boulevard which created it, the Masque remains a grimy hologram, a tag on Cecil b. de Mille's Boulevard of Shattered Screams; never to be crossed out...haha...
Foreword by art curator-historian Kristine McKenna.
Introduction by Brendan Mullen.
Average customer rating:
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The Movie Producer: A Handbook for Producing and Picture-Making
Paul N. Lazarus
Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Direction & Production
| Movies
| Entertainment
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General
| Movies
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General
| Foreign Languages
| Reference
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ASIN: 0064637247 |
Average customer rating:
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Taste for Wine and Murder: Murder Mystery Party Game
Manufacturer: Bepuzzled
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Puzzles & Games
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General
| Role Playing & Fantasy
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General
| Mystery
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General
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ASIN: 1575610361 |
Average customer rating:
- It is what it is...and provides solid material
- A Very Useful Process Improvement Reference
- Process Improvement Classic Reference
- Buisness process improvment work book
- Not bad, could be better
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Business Process Improvement Workbook: Documentation, Analysis, Design, and Management of Business Process Improvement
H. James Harrington ,
K. C. Esseling , and
Van Nimwegen
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Business Process Change: A Manager's Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)
ASIN: 0070267790 |
Book Description
This long-awaited companion and update to H. James Harrington's best-selling Business Process Improvement is a hands-on implementation guide. It focuses on upgrading information distribution paths to optimize the many processes with which they come in contact. Filled with lists, charts, and appendices, this workbook tells how to document a company's processes, analyze current effectiveness, design new processes, use system enablers, and much more.
Customer Reviews:
It is what it is...and provides solid material.......2007-03-13
I agree with other reviewers who question the designation "workbook." Actually, what we have here is a book which suggests the work which each reader must complete -- individually and in collaboration with others -- with regard to the documentation, analysis, design, and management of business process improvement. It provides no head-snapping revelations, nor do its co-authors claim to offer any. Obviously, it is important to improve performance continuously by improving various processes during which tasks are completed. It is also important to measure only what matters. Finally, all organizations (regardless of size or nature) must develop leaders at all levels and within all areas who drive change initiatives to achieve these objectives. Harrington, Esseling, and van Nimwegen offer a comprehensive, cohesive, and cost-effective methodology. Once having identified the "what," they focus on "how."
As the authors explain, Business Process Improvement (BPI) consists of four different approaches designed to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and adaptability of administrative processes: Fast Analysis Solution Technique (FAST), process benchmarking, process redesign, and process reengineering. They recommend a six-phase process that leads to the implementation of the best-value future-state solution: Organization, Documentation, Analysis, Design, Implementation, and Management. They then focus on each approach and each phase, suggesting similarities and differences between and among them.
I would have rated this book even higher had the presentation of the material been more "reader-friendly." By the time I reached Chapter 5 on page 167, the monotonous tone of the narrative to that point made it difficult for me to sustain my concentration. I always appreciate the provision of checklists, for example, because they organize and summarize key points, and, because they facilitate (indeed expedite) review of them later. To repeat, the material is solid. The authors obviously know what they are talking about. Their observations are based on real-world situations. Their suggestions are sensible. That said, this reader (at least) had to work much too hard to locate, absorb, and then digest the authors' core concepts.
No doubt other readers will find the material more accessible. My guess (only a guess) is that many of those who do will be C-level executives in larger organizations who already know much more about BPI than I do. I wish them and their associates well, hoping they can effectively apply -- and then have their organization benefit substantially from -- what Harrington, Esseling, and van Nimwegen offer.
A Very Useful Process Improvement Reference.......2006-09-19
I agree with the other reviewers, as I first purchased this book assuming that it was a "workbook" with working examples. It wasn't this type of workbook, but is a very valuable resource for the process-improvement minded. It could have utilized more illustrations - I suggest creating your own diagrams as you read through this book. This is the approach I took whilst reading the book and was very satisfied with the results.
Documentation, a very important subject that is often overlooked and/or underutilized, is explained very well in this book, describing the level of detail required to support a successful process improvement initiative. The Appendix XI - guidelines for designing forms and documents is fantastic and I recommend it for anyone considering facilitating process improvement workshops.
The organization chapter on organizing a process improvement team is very good - managers and especially companies wanting to accelerate their process improvement successes could benefit from this instruction.
The Defining Improvement Opportunities chapter was also very informative, linking the need for standardization with IT, administration and operations.
And lastly, don't discount one of the authors - H James Harrington. He is one of the best business writers in the business for topics ranging from process improvement, project management, customer service or even human resources. Don't miss a chance to read anything he has written.
I would disagree that this book is dry - it is well written and researched and if it had contained a few more illustrations, I would have given this book a 5-star rating.
Process Improvement Classic Reference.......2006-05-31
This book serves as a powerful reference on process improvement.
The author, H.J. Harrington, is wise. We can learn a lot from him. He's got great experience from the firm, Ernst and Young.
The book provides a deep, well-structured and methodical glimpse into the practice of process improvement.
Although there are many books on the subject (older and newer) this book is foundational. It blends TQM and Industrial engineering concepts. At some degree it is a "deep dive" into the Six Sigma method's Business Process Architecture (BPA) tool.
This book is a great reference for consultants, line managers, business process managers/owners and business analysts as well as anyone wanting a thorough understanding of Process Improvement.
Reading it and applying the practices described within may save companies money. It can build career enhancing compentencies in those that adopt/practice what they have learned.
For the relatively low price you can have access to the mind of a sage.
Buisness process improvment work book.......2006-03-08
Provide an excellent overview of BPM and provide good examples.
Not bad, could be better.......2002-07-19
I'll agree with users who feel this book is dry, dry, dry. I also have some issues with the design of the book. There were concepts that I found confusing until I drew my own flow charts -such aids could certainly have been included in the book. There were too many bulleted lists that probably should have been numbered for easier reference and ranking. Where this book shines is on the mechanics on BPI; how to organize the project and the teams (although a good project manager should know how to do this), the sequence of steps to go through, and how to organize all the collected information.
What is missing from this book, in my opinion, is discussion on Risk Management and Change Management. You can document processes and manuals and forms until you're blue in the face, but in the end, you'll have to get human beings to buy into the difficult task of changing processes to reach the future state, and there is little discussion of this.
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- Amedeo Modigliani: Portraits and Nudes (Pegasus Library Paperback)
- America's Great Comic-Strip Artists: From the Yellow Kid to Peanuts
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