Lifestyles of the Insurance Agent: The Horror and Real-life Personal Stories You¿ve Never Heard About

Book Description

Sometimes with tongue in cheek, sometimes with deadly seriousness, Leroy Wardlaw invites us to take a look into the Lifestyles of the Insurance Agent: The Horror and Real-life Personal Stories You've Never Heard About.

Through Mr. Wardlaw's candid look at the job of an insurance agent selling auto, home, and life insurance, we learn it is not so much a case of caveat emptor as it is "client be honest and up-front with your agent." Only by doing so, says Mr. Wardlaw, can our agent help us figure out the best options for our insurance needs as well as to make sure those needs continue to be fulfilled as time goes on and changes occur in our lives. In this way, you can build a long and lasting relationship with your insurance agent, guaranteeing the best service for the life of your policies.

Book Description

Reviewing key contemporary issues and debates about consumption, this volume portrays and assesses the varied and complex intersections of consumption and everyday life. Throughout, the contributors show how cultural consumption involves a range of active, creative, and critical practices. The rich and idiosyncratic nature of local consumption practices is illustrated through cases from different parts of the world. Through such cases, the contributors show the varying balance between constraint and creativity, links between consumption and production, and the patterns that shape access to symbolic and material resources. Consumption takes place in the context of everyday lives, which take place in space: questions of place and identity, the privatization of the home, and the linking of local everyday practices with broader, global processes are explored. Particular attention is given to the media and new communication technologies as points of overlap and exchange between the local and the global, between domestic consumption and the public sphere. The book is written in an accessible style, and each chapter includes questions and activities for students, and selected readings. The book will be of interest to students and lecturers across a range of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, communication, cultural and media studies, and geography.

Consumption and Everyday Life (The New Sociology)

Average customer rating:

Consumption and Everyday Life (The New Sociology)
Mark Paterson
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Consumer Behavior | Marketing & Sales | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Science | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0415355079

Book Description

Introducing the key ideas and major theorists of consumption in a lively and engaging manner, this book draws on theories of everyday life and aspects of sociology, cultural geography, and cultural studies, and presents a comprehensive exploration of the central themes in consumption and consumer culture. Readily accessible case studies describe familiar forms of consumption from areas of everyday life, grounding the debates and ideas discussed.
While each of the chapters crystallize the debate in a specific subject area, they also lie within a larger argument concerning the ethics, the poetics, and the politics of consumption in everyday life, making this essential reading for undergraduates in cultural studies, sociology, and cultural geography courses.

A Token of My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business Culture (Popular Cultures, Everyday Lives)

Average customer rating:

A Token of My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business Culture (Popular Cultures, Everyday Lives)
Barry Shank
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Company Profiles | Biography & History | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Economic History | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Holiday Greeting Cards | Formats | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0231118791

Book Description

Each year in the United States, millions of mass-produced greeting cards proclaim their occasional messages: "For My Loving Daughter," "On the Occasion of Your Marriage," and "It's a Boy!" For more than 150 years, greeting cards have tapped into and organized a shared language of love, affection, and kinship, becoming an integral part of American life and culture. Contemporary incarnations of these emotional transactions performed through small bits of decorated paper are often dismissed as vacuous clichés employing worn-out stereotypes. Nevertheless, the relationship of greeting cards to systems of material production is well worth studying and understanding, for the modern greeting card is the product of an industry whose values and aims seem to contradict the sentiments that most cards express. In fact, greeting cards articulate shifting forms of love and affiliation experienced by people whose lives have been shaped by the major economic changes of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A Token of My Affection shows in fascinating detail how the evolution of the greeting card reveals the fundamental power of economic organization to enable and constrain experiences of longing, status, desire, social connectedness, and love and to structure and partially determine the most private, internal, and intimate of feelings.

Beautifully illustrated, A Token of My Affection follows the development of the modern greeting card industry from the 1840s, as a way of recovering that most elusive of things -- the emotional subjectivity of another age. Barry Shank charts the evolution of the greeting card from an afterthought to a traditional printing and stationery business in the mid-nineteenth century to a multibillion-dollar industry a hundred years later. He explains what an industry devoted to emotional sincerity means for the lives of all Americans. Blending archival research in business history with a study of surviving artifacts and a literary analysis of a broad range of relevant texts and primary sources, Shank demonstrates the power of business to affect love and the ability of love to find its way in the marketplace of consumer society.

Average customer rating:

I would like to know more about the author

American Politics and Everyday Life
Robert D. Holsworth , and J. Harry Wray
Manufacturer: Macmillan Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

State & Local Government | Government | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Practical Politics | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

I would like to know more about the author.......2000-02-14

I would like to know when he was born, information about his career, his background, and information about the book.

Consuming Media: Communication, Shopping and Everyday Life

Average customer rating:

Consuming Media: Communication, Shopping and Everyday Life
Johan Fornas , Karin Becker , Erling Bjurstrom , and Hillevi Ganetz
Manufacturer: Berg Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Consumer Behavior | Marketing & Sales | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Media Studies | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Consumer Guides | Reference | Subjects | Books

Communication | Words & Language | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1845207599
Release Date: 2007-09-04

Book Description

Inspired by Walter Benjamin's classical Arcades Project, this book is a pioneering exploration of the interface between communication, shopping and everyday life. Based on a six-year study by over a dozen scholars on a specific site, it analyzes the links between power, media and consumption in contemporary urban culture. Illustrated with rich ethnographic detail, Consuming Media scrutinizes four main media circuits--print media, media images, sound and motion, and hardware machines--to assess how media texts and technologies are selected, purchased and used. Exploring the relations between different media, the nature of cultural citizenship and the power relations of public space, it presents an ethnography of globalization and develops a new approach to understanding media consumption.

Cultural Consumption and Everyday life (Cultural Studies in Practice)

Average customer rating:

Cultural Consumption and Everyday life (Cultural Studies in Practice)
John Storey
Manufacturer: A Hodder Arnold Publication
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Consumer Guides | Reference | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Culture Industry (Routledge Classics)

ASIN: 0340720360

Book Description

Cultural consumption is one of the key activities of everyday life: it can say who we are or who we would like to be. This book explores cultural consumption from the postdisciplinary perspective of cultural studies. It provides a critical map of the field and brings together work on consumer culture in anthropology and sociology and work on media audiences within media studies and sociology.

The Design of Everyday Life (Cultures of Consumption)

Average customer rating:

The Design of Everyday Life (Cultures of Consumption)
Elizabeth Shove , Matthew Watson , Martin Hand , and Jack Ingram
Manufacturer: Berg Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Criticism | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Consumer Behavior | Marketing & Sales | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Decorating | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

General | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

How do common household items such as basic plastic house wares or high-tech digital cameras transform our daily lives? The Design of Everyday Life considers this question in detail, from the design of products through to their use in the home. Drawing on interviews with consumers themselves, the authors look at how everyday objects, ranging from screwdrivers to photo management software, are used on a practical level. Closely investigating the design, production and use of mass-market goods, the authors offer new interpretations of how consumers' needs are met and manufactured. They examine the dynamic interaction of products with everyday practices. The Design of Everyday Life offers a fresh perspective on material culture, drawing crucial--and previously overlooked--links between design, consumption and use.

Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia

Average customer rating:

Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia
Youna Kim
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

Consumption and Everyday Life

Manufacturer: ROUTLEDGE
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GTGO3W

Book Description

This third collection of Jim and Marian Jordan as Fibber McGee and Molly features Hal Peary as their pompous neighbor, Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, before he moved on to his own series. The Fibber McGee and Molly series began in 1935 and lasted until 1956. Now enjoy 18 classic episodes from 1939 and 1940: Molly wants a Budget 04-18-39 McGee Gets Glasses 04-25-39 Zither Lessons 05-16-39 Stork-Parrot Mix-Up 05-23-39 Escaped Convicts 05-30-39 McGee the Wrestler 06-06-39 Newspaper Advice Column 06-13-39 Newspaper Columnist 09-19-39 Fibber Is Too Ill to Do House-work 09-26-39 The Auto Show 10-31-39 Hiawatha - McGee's Play 11-07-39 Department Store Adjusters 12-05-39 Jewelry Store Robbery 12-12-39 Package from Uncle Sycamore 12-19-39 Butler Gildersleeve 12-26-39 McGee Builds a Dog House 01-02-40 Borrows Gildy's Suit 01-09-40 McGee's Car Is Stolen 01-16-40

Customer Reviews:

Fibber McGee and Molly brought to you by Johnson's Wax.......2007-03-18

Fibber McGee and Molly were a popular radio comedy duo of the late 1930s early 40s. This CD includes two radio shows from 1941 noted by another reviewer rather than those in the product description. Part of the charm for me is that the original commercials for Johnson's wax are included. The CD has excellent radio-level sound quality. One comical song is an ode to the radio sound effect man. Give yourself or a friend an authentic 1940s radio experience with this CD.

The CD is excellent but the product description is incorrect. 5 Stars for the CD. Less stars for Amazon

Actual show titles.......2006-12-06

The description of this cd is totally incorrect. Actually this cd has two shows to enjoy, not those shown;

Amusement Park 06-17-41 & Off to Hollywood 06-24-41.

Both are excellent, if you're a Fibber McGee & Molly fan.

I have owned this cd for a few years having purchased it directly from Radio Spirits. I was hoping to get new shows as stated in the description.

The Old-Time Radio Collection: Fibber McGee & Molly

Average customer rating:

The Old-Time Radio Collection: Fibber McGee & Molly
Nostalgia Ventures Inc.
Manufacturer: Nostalgia Ventures
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

Humor | Books on Cassette | Audiobooks | Formats | Books

Radio Shows | Books on Cassette | Audiobooks | Formats | Books

General | Books on Cassette | Audiobooks | Formats | Books

General | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General Broadcasting | Radio | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0971526931

Book Description

Join Husband and Wife team Jim and Marian Jordan as they Portray Fibber McGee and Molly in one of radio's most popular comedy series. Discover the Hilarious antics of Fibber McGee, an incredible windbag and teller of tall tales as he pursues endless get-rich-quick schemes that usually leaves his wife Molly at wit's end. Adding to the hilarity of this delightful duo is a host of entertaining neighbors and friends that unexpectedly drop in for a visit. Their presence inevitably ends up creating further confusion and humor to an already out of control situation.

Now, with this incredible collection you can own 50 of their most popular episodes and join Fibber as he opens his hall closet full of memories.

Featuring these Shows:

After Dinner Speaker at Rotowantis · Mouse In The House · McGee's Hamburger Joint · The Gildersleeve Memory Course · Escaped Convicts · McGee the Wrestler · Advice Column - Aunt Molly & Uncle Fibber · Toothache and Dr. Gildersleeve · McGee's Fish Fry · 15th Anniversary - Elopement - plus many, many more!

Book Description

Michael Nyman's book is a first-hand account of experimental music from 1950 to 1970. First published in 1974, it has remained the classic text on a significant form of music making and composing that developed alongside, and partly in opposition to, the postwar modernist tradition of composers such as Boulez, Berio, or Stockhausen. The experimentalist par excellence was John Cage whose legendary 4' 33'' consists of four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence to be performed on any instrument. Such pieces have a conceptual rather than purely musical starting point and radically challenge conventional notions of the musical work. Nyman's book traces the revolutionary attitudes that were developed toward concepts of time, space, sound, and composer/performer responsibility. It was within the experimental tradition that the seeds of musical minimalism were sown and the book contains reference to the early works of Reich, Riley, Young, and Glass. This second edition contains a new Foreword, an updated discography, and a historical overview by the author.

Customer Reviews:

Not a revision, a reprint.......2007-05-21

The other reviews catch it all. Nyman's points are 'interesting', but it is Nyman. This is my second copy as I thought it was revised. It's a reprint.

A Classic Introduction.......2004-02-21

Not only is this a great introduction for someone who doesn't know his or her way around this subject, but it offers more experienced listeners and readers Nyman's own sensitive, and (to my mind) highly accurate, takes on what Cage, Feldman, Brown, Cardew, LaMonte Young and others were up to back in the pre-revolutionary 50's and the revolutionary 60's and 70's. This is a snapshot, if you will, of many of the giants fully formed, and some, like Gavin Bryars, in the larval stages of their genius, so it makes for a fascinating read. Nyman's prose is pellucid, and his explanations cogent. My dream is that Michael Nyman will someday return to update this book and offer some insights on the new, strange paths, experimental music has taken in the age of the personal computer, robotics and the Internet.

THE 20th CENTURY RADICAL AVANT-GARDE.......2003-02-09

In this work originally published in 1974, Nyman discusses the work of composers and performers who shifted the boundaries of music as regards notation, time, space, and the roles of the composer, performer and audience. The author seeks to identify and explain a whole body of musical work that existed outside the classical tradition and the avant-garde orthodoxies that flowed from it. He thus explores the Anglo-American musical tradition loosely associated with John Cage. Since 1974 this book has been considered the classical work on the radical alternative to the mainstream avant-garde as represented by Berio, Boulez and Stockhausen. Many of the current popular composers like Glass and Reich trace their root to this experimental school. The most fascinating chapter to me is "Minimal Music, Determinacy And The New Tonality" in which the Theatre Of Eternal Music (Tony Conrad, La Monte Young, Marion Zazeela and John Cale) as well as the work of Terry Riley is discussed. Photographs, illustrations and musical notations enliven the text and the book concludes with a selected source bibliography, a discography of experimental music and a bibliography of publications since 1974. Brian Eno has contributed an interesting foreword to this edition. The text can get a bit technical for the non-musician, but it remains a detailed work on a radical musical direction that has borne great fruit in the years since it was first analysed in this thorough and scholarly work.

processes and fields of sound, not time-objects..........2001-03-28

Nyman's 1974 classic is here reprinted sans revisions. Brilliant! It captures a moment -- as Nyman concludes his preface, "Thank goodness I wrote it when I did." EM is not a survey of 20th century avant-garde music. It focuses on one trend, inaugurated by Cage, Wolff, Feldman and Brown in the 1950s, a trend which explicitly attempted to overturn the traditional avant-garde then marching under the banner of total serialism. Nyman contrasts Wolff to Stockhausen, then a leading serialist: "Stockhausen is speaking of an unwanted situation needing to be remedied by his intervention, Wolff of a situation he is quite happy to accept, leaving sounds to go their own way." (27) As Cage says in his "Silence,"

"Not an attempt to understand... Just an attention to the activity of sounds."

One of the great strengths of Nyman's short book is his careful attempt to define experimental music before he moves on to discuss the artists and their music. To summarize and paraphrase, he says experimental composers are excited by creating "a process of generating action," involving situations or fields delineated by compositional rules, but leaving them open to the performers. (4)

Experimental music is uncompromisingly radical, and represents an ongoing influence on creative music, but has certainly not become any sort of popular movement. So for instance, while the early "minimalists" Young and Riley were arguably part of the experimental tendency, as were Reich's early phase patterns, (and hence are included here by Nyman), the later works of Reich, and especially Glass, are no longer open and experimental. And while Eno and recent techno/ambient artists have been influenced, their innovations have been more technical than conceptual by comparison.

My recommendation if this sounds intriguing -- check out anything by the English free-improv group AMM, which is nowadays constituted by Eddie Prevost on percussion, Keith Rowe on guitar and electronics, and John Tilbury on piano!

A welcome return.......2000-11-14

When Michael Nyman first published this work in the 70s, it was the only book of its kind to discuss some of the most cutting-edge stuff going around. Most musical texts avoided discussing the Fluxus group as "music," but Nyman integrates these radicals easily, and provided the first discussion of the Scratch Orchestra (Cardew et al), and related topics. The book still contains some of the clearest discussions of these topics around. It's great to have it back in print, though too bad Nyman couldn't be bothered to provide updates on some of the folks discussed, like Hugh Skempton.

Average customer rating:

Experimental Music : Cage and Beyond
Michael Nyman
Manufacturer: Schirmer Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000O95T12

Average customer rating:

Experimental Music, Cage and Beyond
Michael Nyman
Manufacturer: Schirmer Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000O96OS4

Average customer rating:

Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond.
Michael. NYMAN
Manufacturer: Studio Vista
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000ORMTQM

Book Description

This volume examines the ways in which sport shapes the experiences of various immigrant and minority groups and in particular, looks at the relationship between sport, ethnic identity and ethnic relations.
The essays in this volume are concerned primarily with British, American and Australian sporting traditions and the themes covered include the consolidation of ethnic identity in host societies through participant immigrant sports and exclusive sporting organizations, assimilation into "host" societies through participation in indigenous, national sports, and the construction by outsiders of separate ethnic identities according to sporting criteria.

Book Description

If you develop software without understanding the requirements, you're wasting your time.

On the other hand, if a project spends too much time trying to understand the requirements, it will end up late and/or over-budget. And products that are created by such projects can be just as unsuccessful as those that fail to meet the basic requirements.

Instead, every company must make a reasonable trade-off between what's required and what time and resources are available.

Finding the right balance for your project may depend on many factors, including the corporate culture, the time-to-market pressure, and the criticality of the application. That is why requirements management—gathering requirements, identifying the "right" ones to satisfy, and documenting them—is essential.

Just Enough Requirements Management shows you how to discover, prune, and document requirements when you are subjected to tight schedule constraints. You'll apply just enough process to minimize risks while still achieving desired outcomes. You'll determine how many requirements are just enough to satisfy your customers while still meeting your goals for schedule, budget, and resources.

If your project has insufficient resources to satisfy all the requirements of your customers, you must read Just Enough Requirements Management. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reviews "Al Davis takes for his subject the largely unexplored middle ground between the requirements purists and the requirements cowboys. Since it's this middle ground where real work gets done, his guidance is both useful and welcome."

—Tom DeMarco, coauthor of Peopleware Principal, The Atlantic Systems Guild, systemsguild.com

Customer Reviews:

If you don't manage requirements then you don't control them..........2006-08-18

If you think that requirements are not all that necessary, this book might change your view: Before you build something, you should decide what you want to build. If you think you cannot start development until requirements are "complete," Davis will convince you that, since requirements change, requirements management is an ongoing activity. He breaks it down into three major areas:

- Requirements elicitation (i.e. determining the actual needs of the stakeholders): This includes identifying ALL the stakeholders and also knowing when and how to apply different elicitation techniques. Davis comments on the proper use of modeling notations are really noteworthy.

- Requirements triage (to balance the delivery date and the development budget against desired requirements): If you don't know what triage is, then you should probably read this book. Its importance (and the author's bias) is manifest when you realize that it has the longest chapter in this book.

- Requirements specification (i.e. documenting requirements): Davis advocates for the use of lists of discrete annotated requirements written in natural language just because natural language is the language of customers (and free text is not too manageable). Supporting models can also be sensibly used, but only for those parts of the system where the use of natural language would introduce too much risk, never to completely replace the written requirements.

"Just Enough Requirements Management" ends with a reminder of change as an unavoidable fact. It also includes an extensive annotated bibliography for those interested in learning more about requirements, just after reading this cleverly-written book...

Must reading to make requirements triage (prioritization) really work.......2006-04-23

Al Davis has done it again, with a highly practical and useable book on the ongoing process of effectively managing changing requirements.

Davis is an expert in requirements, bringing to light his vast expertise in many domains including systems engineering on real (very large) projects as well as commercial software. He is perhaps THE expert on requirements triage.

This book provides practical advise on how to do triage and provides examples and wisdom on documenting requirements that honors both the need to 'write it down' in some way with the reality of ever-changing requirements.

A very good book!.......2006-03-16

One of the best books I have read in this subject. Detailed and with many practical rules and examples.

Requirements Engineering - More isn't necessarily better.......2006-01-24

I was very impressed when reading Alan Davis' latest book on 'Just enough Requirements Management.'

In his past work he has worked on bringing more formalism into requirements engineering in order to make them correct. However, over time he realized that this doesn't solve the real problems, because the requirements are changing despite the fact they've been formalized in advance.

There are not many people who are confident enough to admit that they have learned over the past years which also means that they've changed their mind. Alan is competent enough doing so which makes him really authentic.

A real eye opener for most of the readers is probably his illustration of the reality of ongoing requirements activities despite using a waterfall approach.

In this fast moving world, it is essential to know how much requirements engineering is necessary in order to being able to moving on and it is even more important to know when to stop doing requirements engineering for being in-time on the market.

I really recommend reading this book in order to know what barely sufficient requirement engineering is all about.

I really wish that I had written this book........2005-08-06

The title says it all, this book really does explore all of the issues surrounding how to do just enough requirements management on your software development projects. I'd argue that it provides the insight that you require to put together an requirements program within your organization that is right for you, one that is sufficiently agile yet still reflects your situation. It explores strategies for eliciting requirements, prioritizing/triaging requirements, specifying requirements, and finally managing requirements change. Davis managed to pull off what few writers can do - by exploring the requirements management spectrum he has presented a range of strategies which should speak to both traditionalists and agilists. For traditionalists he presents some pretty convincing arguments that the "big requirements document up front" strategy might not be all that effective, and for agilists he presents convincing arguments that we need to invest some effort in requirements documentation. Most important is a running theme throughout the book: the goal isn't to write a perfect requirements document, it's to deliver working software which meets the needs of your stakeholders in a timely and cost effective manner. Sounds like really great advice to me.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books