Book Description
What began as a biography of George Millay, the "Father of the Waterpark Industry," ended up being both the intriguing life story of a great and successful risk-taker AND the first-ever, in-depth look at the creation of two theme park genres which today entertain more than 100 million people a year, worldwide.
KEY FEATURES
1 - First book ever written about George Millay. He has waited until he felt comfortable "telling it all." And tell it all, he did. Friends and family who have read the manuscript have commented they learned new things about a man they have known for years. He has a reputation for not wanting to talk personally about himself or his family.
2 - George Millay's personal story is one of a risk-taker and is an excellent business primer on how calculated and creative risk taking and deal making can pay off.
3 - This is the first in-depth look at the creation and the early history of the SeaWorld parks, now owned by Anheuser-Busch; Magic Mountain, now owned by Six Flags; and the Wet'n Wild parks, now owned by Universal and by Palace Entertainment. The book chronicles the deals, the people, and the events that shaped these parks - from concept through construction and the early years of operation.
Customer Reviews:
A fitting tribute to a theme park pioneer.......2007-01-04
George Millay died on February 6, 2006 but his legacy lives on. Millions have visited Sea World and Wet and Wild. What sparked these two theme parks was George's experiences in the restaurant business. You'll have to read the book to see how he made the leap.
The book describes how George went to various them parks to get ideas, such as the wave generation machine for Wet and Wild.
Sea World was the first to use an ozone purification system. When the Marine Mammal Protection Act was enacted in 1972, Sea World started a captive breeding program to replenish its stock of animals.
George was a visionary and a problem solver; however, even these were not enough. Sometimes he had to depend on luck. On more than one occasion, George came to the brink of financial disaster.
Once I picked up the book, I couldn't put it down. Highly recommended reading even it you're not considering opening a theme park.
He beats Trump as a risk taker and deal maker. Fun book!.......2004-10-09
This book reveals how he created Sea World, Wet'N Wild and Magic Mountain. What a deal maker and career breaker. It was a wild ride. Hilarious tales of boom, bust and triumph. Read about the peacock's infamous flight. Twists and turns follow George building two aquatic empires. I woke my wife up from laughing so hard while reading it in bed. I couldn't put it down. Get the story from the ultimate insider of amusement parks.
George Millay launched two successful amusement industries almost single-handedly: Marine-life Parks and Water Slide Parks. He seems to have made a bigger splash than Shamu. Millions still are entertained in the wake of his creations: Sea Worlds, Wet `n Wilds and Magic Mountain. Wave Maker is a big splash!
Book Description
Bill Spiller was forty-seven when he was forced by desperate finances to caddie at the Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles. One day Spiller was caddying for a member who became outraged by Spiller’s stories of inequities and suffering during his golfing career. The golfer urged Spiller to write California’s attorney general, who later ordered the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) to cease its discrimination. In 1961 the “Caucasian race” clause was deleted from the PGA constitution. This was an historic decision that gave black golfers the chance to compete at the highest level in the sport.
Golf has long been the domain of white men. During the twentieth century, however, African American pioneers such as Lee Elder, Howard Wheeler, and Charlie Sifford broke down the barriers for black golfers who wanted to play, and win, as equals with white golfers. A Course of Their Own looks at golf from the perspectives of these men, who had courage as well as remarkable skills. It tells the stories of their struggles, their bravery, and their passion for the game and puts their lives and contributions into historical perspective.
Customer Reviews:
A Good Read.......2002-01-04
This is a good introduction to the history of African Americans and their quest to enter the professional ranks / PGA. It needs to be read with Charlie Sifford's book which tells you the real deal. Kennedy really can't express the pain of black golfers, he gets close but the book is more of an overview. Key and critical details are left out of the book. I can't over emphasize how important it is for you to read Charlie Sifford's, Just Let Me Play as well as Calvin Sinnette's, Forbidden Fairways.
Dear author, thank you . . ........2000-10-23
This is truly a long-overdue book. This was received as a birthday gift to my husband and I could not resist. Very well written and is a wonderful and tragic chronicle of America's history in human relations. Yes, we are better today. We are reminded of the wonders of all people and how much we have to learn from eachother. When will we have the ability to evaluate skill and talent beyond skin color or accent? This book reminds us to appreciate eachother. This should be required reading in our junior high schools as part of American history/social studies.
An inspiring story.......2000-07-22
After you read this book you may be angry or you may be happy, but you will definitely be inspired. The author has written a long overdue book about the lives and struggles of the many African American professional golfers who toiled and struggled--largely in obscurity--under the thumb of racism before cracking golf's color barrier. Just about every sports fan in America knows about Jackie Robinson and his heroic deeds, but few know names such as Bill Spiller and Teddy Rhodes. Pity. This book may finally engender the respect and compassion long denied the black golfers who paved the way for Tiger Woods, who today is the world's most popular athlete. A hearty thumbs up for this one!
Average customer rating:
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The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir
Megan E. Abbott
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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ASIN: 0312294816 |
Book Description
This book considers a recurrent figure in American literature: the solitary white man moving through urban space. The descendent of 19th-century frontier and western heroes, the figure reemerges in 1930s-'50s America as the "tough guy." The Street Was Mine looks to the tough guy in the works of hardboiled novelists Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep) and James M. Cain (Double Indemnity) and their popular film noir adaptations. Focusing on the way he negotiates racial and gender "otherness," this study argues that the tough guy embodies the promise of an impervious white masculinity amidst the turmoil of the Depression through the beginnings of the Cold War. The book concludes with an analysis of Chester Himes, whose Harlem crime novels (For Love of Imabelle) unleash a ferocious revisionary critique of the tough guy tradition.
Amazon.com
Veteran show-biz news hound Charles Fleming argues that the short, insanely foolish life of producer Don Simpson (Flashdance, Top Gun, Bad Boys) stands as a larger indictment of Hollywood, and it's hard to argue with him. For one thing, Simpson helped create Tom Cruise, Richard Gere, Will Smith, and Eddie Murphy, and his loud, high-concept, low-IQ school of filmmaking helped launch Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, and Bruce Willis to new heights (or depths). Others may have been responsible for 14 Top Ten pop tunes and 10 Oscar nominations, but nobody had thought to combine pop music and movies in a synergistic way.
While Fleming concentrates on Simpson's own antics--car wrecks, career crackups, whacked-out drug and sex orgies, whimsical overspending on brain-dead blockbusters--he does make an excellent case that the entertainment industry as a whole is nutty and slutty. Even the more levelheaded stars who turn up in High Concept turn out to be appalling: Fleming documents the behavior that earned Demi Moore the Hollywood nickname "Gimme More."
Despite his $60,000-a-month drug habit, Simpson actually did come up with smart ideas, according to many witnesses, and he was sharp enough to know how dumb so many of his colleagues were. Sylvester Stallone, for instance, almost starred in Beverly Hills Cop, and had he not left the project in favor of his notorious stink bomb Rhinestone, viewers would have been stuck with Stallone's rewrite of Cop, from which the star had removed every trace of humor--the very concept that made an ordinary action film, in Murphy's talented hands, a smash hit. In his detailed account of Simpson's bizarre life, Fleming demonstrates why modern movies are the way they are.
He also proves what a strangely tiny town Hollywood is. Simpson was mixed up with Heidi Fleiss, whose indicted dad was Madonna's pediatrician; his doctors had treated Kurt Cobain and Margaux Hemingway (and one had helped design Miss Piggy); Don Simpson's drug dealer claims he sold drugs to O.J. Simpson the day Nicole Brown Simpson died. The most shocking thing about the book is the Pulp Fiction-like combination of decadent horror and slapstick comedy that constituted everyday life for Don Simpson's cronies. The high life, as described in Fleming's addictively readable book, exemplifies Carrie Fisher's Hollywood mantra: "Good anecdote--bad reality." --Tim Appelo
Book Description
What Hit and Run was to Hollywood financial impropriety, and what You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again was to sex, drugs, and self-destruction, High Concept is to the evolution of today's driving business philosophy and simultaneous back-lot grotesqueries of the contemporary entertainment industry.
Using the life and career of producer Don Simpson as a point of departure, High Concept takes readers on a riveting journey inside the Hollywood of the 1980s and 1990s. Throughout the period, Simpson and his partner, Jerry Bruckheimer, were the most successful independent producers in the history of moviemaking, responsible for the hit films Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, Crimson Tide, Bad Boys, and The Rock. Widely credited with the genesis of the "tentpole," or "event," business strategy, which could make a studio's year in a single shot, Simpson had an uncanny ability to boil down a movie into an easily salable product. His films generated billions of dollars at the box office, and today his business philosophy continues to drive the fortunes of the major studios, where $100 million blockbusters are now the norm.
But at the same time that his vision was driving the Hollywood bottom line, Simpson's lifestyle epitomized the pervasive dark side of the industry's power base. Through intensive research and interviews with sources throughout the film community, Charles Fleming chronicles how Simpson made his mark as a young executive at Paramount, gradually gained entry into a small circle of friends, and gratified himself beyond recognition. His legendary consumption knew no bounds. This unrestrained excess killed him and sent a warning cry throughout the industry.
Customer Reviews:
Should have been a chronological biography.......2007-03-26
As an example of Hollywood excess, this book gives you exactly what you want: drugs, money, prostitutes, S&M sex, movies, parties, more money, more drugs, more sex, rehab, fast cars, movie stars, even more drugs, even more sex, peanut butter, and early death. I agree with another reviewer that the book is repetitive: but this is not only because of the subject matter and poor editing, it is because of the form of the book.
The big mistake, I think, was to seperate Simpson's life and career into separate chapters, one on sex, one on drugs and so on, rather than to write it as a chronological biography. As a result of this decision the overall trajectory of his life - his determined rise, spectacular success, and descent into excess and death - is lost; and I found myself at times trying to work out exactly which point of his career was now being discussed, and how it related to other incidents in other chapters. I came away with no clear shape of his life as a result.
So, interesting because of the subject matter, but, like Simpson himself, a bit messy and chaotic.
Where will we find such men again?.......2005-10-11
If you're like me, an entertainment industry practitioner who is cynical but still optimistic about the industry, who knows the dark side but sees the simple pleasure in a great film, album or live act, then this book should be your solace.
Don Simpson was quite simply a mad genius who, with Jerry Bruckheimer, formed one of the greatest teams ever to work in the medium of film. This biography goes into great details about the means and methods by which Don Simpson was able to achieve the heights of production success, with films such as Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, The Rock, Bad Boys, Days of Thunder, Flashdance and others.
Even if you're not interested in the movie making process, this book worth it alone for the tales of total debauchery, hedonism and excess. Celebrity stories that will make your hair curl, writing so vivid that you'll wonder why it hasn't been made into a film itself!
A great book.
High Concept.......2005-09-26
A great inside look at the insane world of Hollywood. Don Simpson is a clear representation of how your personal habits and experiences have little to do with your success in Hollywood. If you know about Simpson and his lifestyle, this book will serve as a tool to further insight into a mad genus of the classic Hollywood narrative. If you are unfamiliar with him, this book will widen your eyes to the excesses of Hollywood and what really goes on beyond the red carpets and glamour. A great inside peek at the world of Hollywood and what makes up the people that make the movies America loves.
Some Insight Found if you Dig.......2005-07-01
Why is it that the movie FLASHDANCE has been central to the last 4 industry books I have read? It provides a great RASHOMON-style perspective on the industry: Get producer Don Simpson's take in High Concept, producer Lynda Obst's take in Hello He Lied, producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters in Hit and Run, and finally, writer Joe Esterhaz's take in Hollywood Animal.
Anyway, on to High Concept: I felt the book was poorly written and too often shot for the tabloid instead of the insight. I was more interested in his role in the industry and his exploits with Bruckheimer but this was overshadowed by chapters on his drug use and penchant for hookers.
an interesting insight..........2005-05-26
Although not amazingly written or as witty as "easy riders, raging bulls" this is a fun read and gives a view one of hollywoods uber producers. This guy's done it all, although obviously very talented, it was Don Simpsons own self esteem and giant ego that led to his own destruction, and this book tries to explain why, exploring the sources of his problems. The writer often takes newspaper/magazine cuttings and just pastes them into the storyline, which I guess is a large part of the read. But if you want to know more about the gossip and the man behind such 80s classics like Top Gun and Flashdance and how they came into creation this is a fine read.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent source of monsters for 1st Edition AD&D.......2000-04-03
The Fiend Folio, if you can still find it, is an excellent source of monsters "malevolent and benign," but mostly malevolent. It introduces many creatures which are staples to 2nd edition AD&D, such as the githzerai and githyanki (from Planescape) and the Death Knight (from Krynn/Dragonlance). It has an excellent mix of extraplanar and standard monsters, so it will be suitable for any level campaign. However, I would recommend it especially highly if you were running a campaign that dealt with the Elemental planes, because this has very detailed information on Mephits and the Elemental Princes, as well as other incidental elemental creatures. All in all, it makes an excellent creature sourcebook for those of you still dedicated to 1st edition AD&D.
Book Description
Spreadsheets have become the de facto standard for communicating business information and the preferred tool for analyzing business data. In this current climate, the accuracy and clarity of spreadsheets are paramount. However, busy managers have little time to sift through heaps of reference books to extrapolate techniques for making polished spreadsheets. Even with finished spreadsheets in hand, managers and business professionals still need a book which holds up a mirror to their real world situations and reflects hidden flaws; and then takes the next step and guides the reader in specific ways to rework these critical documents.
Excel Best Practices for Business enables readers to examine their work and ask critical questions. And once asked, this book also answers with dynamic, practical approaches and provides Take-Aways extrapolated from real situations across a managerial spectrum, making this book more mentor than reference. In this book, a critical need is met.
Book Highlights:
- XML in Microsoft Office Excel 2003: Entirely new to Excel 2003 is major support for XML, making Excel truly web capable and Internet ready. This book provides extensive coverage of these new features from a hands-on perspective. It identifies subtleties, gotchas and problems, and shows you practical solutions and workarounds.
- SPREADSHEET PORTALS: This book introduces the topic of Spreadsheet Portals, which elevates spreadsheet practices for the Internet-ready software to the next level. Aside from explaining the basic concepts and principles of Desktop Client Portals, best practice techniques for building your portal pages and reference implementations are provided. These reference implementations, sample spreadsheets, and online demos are provided on the book's CD.
- SPREADSHEET MAKEOVERS: What do you do when your manager or boss asks you to take over a complex, spreadsheet-based application and send out reports every two weeks? The person who created the spreadsheet no longer works for the company. Aside from a few emails, there's no documentation. You look at the spreadsheet and you find it has flaws. Never mind about fixing the old reports; the new ones are going to go out with your name on it. This report is not your prime responsibility. You do not have the time or resources to turn this into a whole project, yet you can't afford to leave it the way it is. Excel Best Practices for Business provides a step-by-step approach to these "Mission Impossible" situations and walks you through the steps with fully worked out examples.
- ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGIES: For the first time in a mainstream book, the topic of preparing accessible spreadsheets for individuals with disabilities is addressed. Government agencies needing to make electronic information section 508 compliant and corporations choosing not to alienate communities with special needs will find the techniques presented invaluable. You will learn from a hands-on perspective how to organize and design accessible spreadsheets for the visually impaired that will work with Screen Reader software, how to set up Screen Reader software, and how to build graphical components that will work with Screen Readers. These practices are carried to the next level with the introduction of Assistive Portals. This allows you to make spreadsheets accessible and avoid having to alter your original spreadsheets. The Portal Page does all the work. Because it is table driven, there are no formulas or scripts to modify. Think of how this will change the economics of preparing accessible documents.
There are many more topics in Excel Best Practices For Business including: practical techniques for visualizing hard-to-present data, incorporating "Smart Data" into your spreadsheets, how to build a Data Overpass, quantification of uncertainty, conversion of mountains of legacy data into manageable and useful form, spreadsheet auditing to validate the work of others, a hands-on approach to working with the Excel Solver tool, spreadsheet construction techniques through both simple design and large, complex applications. If you want to find about these and many other techniques covered, then Excel Best Practices for Business is the perfect guide!
Customer Reviews:
Very worthwhile but frustrating.......2006-07-20
Anyone who uses Excel on a regular basis will find ways to get more out of the product and to improve their spreadsheets by reading this book.
I found some chapters to be of more interest than others, but that is a function of the type of work that I do. The examples for viewing large data sets were particularly helpful to me. I have long been frustrated at the amount of time that some of my Excel-based reports take to run because they relied heavily on constructs which are computationally intensive. After reading this book, I was inspired to rework a number of those reports using OFFSET as described by the author. That one change alone will save me hours of time staring at the screen watching the recalculation progress indicator. On the other hand, incorporating uncertainty into my models is a once-a-year type of need for me. If you need to (or should) incorporate uncertainty into your models, that chapter will get you started.
Which brings me to the frustrations of the book. In many instances, the author takes an approach of "I am going to make you aware of the possibilty that this can be done rather than show you in detail how to do it." This manifests itself either by directing you to more authoritative external sources in cases like the information on uncertainty or by giving you a very brief overview and then suggesting that you dig into the file on the accompanying CD. Browsing the files on the CD is very helpful. Still, I like to read in lots of situations where I don't have a PC handy. I would have liked more description in the text and less reliance on the CD.
Finally, this book commits a cardinal sin which is why I rate it only three stars. In order to view the sample spreadsheets, you need to run an installation program that copies them to your hard drive. These files are less than 30 MB, and they shoud be available as uncompressed files in a normal directory on the CD so they can be browsed at will. If you don't have administrator rights on your PC, you won't be able to look at the sample spreadsheets unless your IT department comes to run the installation routine. Not to mention that you end up also installing the author's add-in, which you may not want, and that by default the sample files get installed way down in the programs subdirectory. All of this is particularly irritating since the files are so necessary to getting value out of the text. Which raises a question for the author. Does this constitute a "best practice?" I don't think so.
A Must Have for Power Users and Novices.......2006-06-10
Excel Best Practices for Business is one of those rare books that teaches you in depth after you think you have mastered its topic. I am so happy that I bought it because both my husband and I have benefited immensely from the book's insight and extremely useful information.
My husband is a user who has looked at almost every and bought most new significant books on MS Excel since version 5, and he hardly expected the eye opening learning opportunity he encountered with Loren Abdulezer's Excel Best Practices for Business. He had successfully completed a number of Excel consulting assignments and had an earned reputation as a user who could make Excel solve a very broad range of difficult problems. Further, he had been blessed with a major gift from his heavy investment of time to master the ability to program Excel when its out-of-the-box capabilities needed to be extended. However, even though he is at the top of his game as an Excel user, reading this book has still been a serious skill-enhancing event.
What I personally find memorable about the book as one whose skills in Excel pale in comparison to my husband's is that Abdulezer's book is very useful to people at my end of the skill spectrum as well. If you want to get up and running with Excel skills that will help you improve your productivity on your job or for your business, this book has much to offer. It teaches you street smarts that help you drive Excel to resolve recurring business challenges. Additionally, Abdulezer has the instincts of a coach who forces mastery of the basics upon those of who think they understand and helps to instill more confidence in those who know they do not. Both my husband and I wish these insights had been available to us when we first began with Excel.
instant service.......2006-03-11
book was recieved within 2 days when I didn't even special ship it. Prime condition.
oops.......2006-03-06
By changing the cell reference scheme this book requires the reader to completely re-orient in order to understand
Some of the principles might be good ideas but it seems as of each one had to be translated into the row-column appraoch to be appreciated
Just getting started with the book.......2005-09-16
My background in Excel is pretty weak, but I'm pretty determined to do some really neat stuff in our office with it. I've read through the first two chapters and started working some examples and I'm able to understand it with just a little work. It's written as clearly as could be, taking into account the subject matter. I'm getting pretty excited about what I'll be able to do. This book seems like it's just what I need to update some old, broken down workbooks that have been hobbling along for years.
On a side note: when I went to the CD to work some samples, I was unable to install the program on my computer due to restrictions on my work computer. I emailed the address from my book and asked if there was a way to access the Excel files without installing the program. Mr Abduzeler emailed me back and he had set up a web page for me to download the files and also wrote a lengthy explanation on how to use them. I was impressed.
I'll update this when I get closer to the end of the book.
Books:
- There Are No Shortcuts
- Too Dangerous To Teach
- Transfer Pricing and Valuation in Corporate Taxation: Federal Legislation vs. Administrative Practice
- Transfer Pricing International: A Country-by-Country Guide
- Untitled
- Walking On Water: Reading, Writing And Revolution
- War Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden, Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry
- Warden: Prison Life and Death From The Inside Out
- What Homebuyers Should Know about Buying a Home
- When the Butterfly Stings
Books Index
Books Home
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Legends: Pioneers of the Amusement Park Industry
Ripley's Believe It or Not! Amusement Park Oddities & Trivia (Ripley's Believe It Or Not!)
31 Months in Japan: The Building of a Theme Park
Walt's Revolution!: By the Numbers
Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World
