Book Description

Cover art my vary.

"In the beginning we were happy. And we were always excessive. So in the beginning we were happy to excess." With these opening lines Sean Wilsey takes us on an exhilarating tour of life in the strangest, wealthiest, and most grandiose of families.

Sean's blond-bombshell mother (one of the thinly veiled characters in Armistead Maupin's bestselling Tales of the City) is a 1980s society-page staple, regularly entertaining Black Panthers and movie stars in her marble and glass penthouse, "eight hundred feet in the air above San Francisco; an apartment at the top of a building at the top of a hill: full of light, full of voices, full of windows full of water and bridges and hills." His enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade and lectures his son on proper hygiene in public restrooms, "You should wash your hands first, before you use the urinal. Not after. Your penis isn't dirty. But your hands are."

When Sean, "the kind of child who sings songs to sick flowers," turns nine years old, his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend. Sean's life blows apart. His mother first invites him to commit suicide with her, then has a "vision" of salvation that requires packing her Louis Vuitton luggage and traveling the globe, a retinue of multiracial children in tow. Her goal: peace on earth (and a Nobel Prize). Sean meets Indira Gandhi, Helmut Kohl, Menachem Begin, and the pope, hoping each one might come back to San Francisco and persuade his father to rejoin the family. Instead, Sean is pushed out of San Francisco and sent spiraling through five high schools, till he finally lands at an unorthodox reform school cum "therapeutic community," in Italy.

With its multiplicity of settings and kaleidoscopic mix of preoccupations-sex, Russia, jet helicopters, seismic upheaval, boarding schools, Middle Earth, skinheads, home improvement, suicide, skateboarding, Sovietology, public transportation, massage, Christian fundamentalism, dogs, Texas, global thermonuclear war, truth, evil, masturbation, hope, Bethlehem, CT, eventual salvation (abridged list)-Oh the Glory of It All is memoir as bildungsroman as explosion. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Probably not worth it.
I read a review of this book and ran out to buy it. It started off somewhat funny but, about halfway through, I found myself struggling with it. The characters here are just too far-fetched. No mother is as crazy as the author's. No stepmother is as wicked as his either. They are not believable. Th ebook drags as he goes from one reform school to another and I found myself caring less and less for the author. I read in the NYTimes that he is some rich kid with a fancy apartment in Soho and a trust fund. As I thouught about it, this is a story about a rich kid who has parents who divorced and a stepmother he doesn't like. Big deal. In the hundreds of pages, there is no sense that he takes ownership for his mistakes, grows, etc. It just keeps going... He needs a good shrink and a better editor.

Addictive, honest & thrilling to read
I started reading the excerpt in The New Yorker and am instantly buying this book.I cannot stop reading it-- The portrait of the author and his parents is un-putdownable...
This is a big story; the themes aremythological -- the detailsdiverting and devastating.Wilsey is on a wild ride with his mother that takes him to the Vatican, the Kremlin and beyond...to a place in world class literature.

YES, THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT THAN YOU AND ME !

Are the rich really different than you and me?You're darn right they are according to Sean Wilsey in the juiciest totally tell-all in many a moon.According to the author, his stepmother, Dade Wilsey, currently a doyenne of San Francisco society, needed no coat hangers to outdo Joan Crawford as the mother-in-law from you know where. Further, while his stepmother provides plenty of fuel for flame, his mother, Pat,is almost certifiable.

In the beginning it was good, we hear, "We were happy.And we were always excessive.So in the beginning we were happy to excess."For them, excess might be defined as his Dad supplying a jet helicopter to drop Wilsey of at the video arcade or his mother tossing lavish bashes in their luxurious home.

Then, when he was 9 his father divorced his mother to marry her friend, Dade, who was 15 years Pat's junior. Pat didn't take this at all well, once suggesting to Wilsey that they commit suicide together. .When that didn't happen she formed an international group of children to bring about world peace and hopped around the globe with Wilsey in tow to do meetings with Sadat and the Pope.After all, as a former Neiman-Marcus model and society columnist, she does have a flare.

As for stepmother, Dade, who brought two sons into the fold, Wilsey remembers a Christmas when she happily undid little boxes under the tree which held $200,000 brooches.She showed her appreciating by giving her husband a kiss and pinning them to her bathrobe.One could go on and on about her luxe lifestyle, but Wilsey puts it best: "If you want a sense of her values, rent the movies "Gaslight" and "Sweet Smell of Success."The scheming lead in "Gaslight" who sweet-talks a wealthy heiress into marrying him and then drives her mad with drink and double-talk, is her."

How is Dade taking all of this?We read that she's threatening to sue.Regardingthe overdoses of jewelry, well, she's quoted as sayingeveryone gave her jewelry - her husband, her exhusband, and her father.

As for Pat?You can't keep a gal from Oklahoma down.When last heard from she was planning a party to celebrate the publication of her son's book.

"Lives of the Rich and Famous" couldn't hold a candle to these folks, and Scott Brick reads their story with grace, gusto, and wry humor.Bet he had a blast doing it.

- Gail Cooke

Fun, good humored tale of a world that doesn't seem real
I know some folks in SF might take offense to the supposed skewering they recieve in this book, but I had a hell of a time reading it.The world described doesn't seem real, and the humor and harsh light falls fairly equally among the "characters" including Wilsey himself.It's one of those stories that is so strange it would never work as "fiction." Totally over the top. ... Read more

Book Description

Health Economics and Policy is a basic introduction to the microeconomics of health, health care, and health policy. This edition demonstrates how economic principles apply to health-related issues. It explains the social, political, and economic contexts of health care delivery and explores the changing nature of health care. Students learn to analyze public policy from an economic perspective. While the text was written for non-economics majors, it includes enough economic content to challenge majors. ... Read more

Book Description

Building Accounting Systems Using Access 2003 gives students the unique opportunity toperform a central role in ensuring that the accounting systems they use, audit, and help design will deliver timely, accurate, and complete information. Valuable hands-on experience reinforces accounting system principles while promoting accountingefficiency and transparency that managers and decision-makers expect. This text is a powerful tool that you can give your students to help them bring accounting systems into a focused perspective. ... Read more

Book Description

Policy Issues for Business is an invaluable tool for students taking courses in strategy, business policy and management. The Reader covers a wide domain, including relevant issues in economics and technology. The readings are neatly divided into eight sections, with a student's introduction to each. The various sections look at the role of policy and the relationship between theory and policy, issues around competition, science technology and innovation policy, international trade and investment policy, regional policy and environmental policy.

Policy Issues for Business will be required reading for undergraduate as well as MBA courses on business policy, technology and innovation management, change management and strategy.

This text is a course Reader, in a series of three (alongside Decision Making for Business, and Strategy for Business), which make up the main teaching texts of The Open University undergraduate course Business Behaviour in a Changing World (B300). ... Read more

Book Description

Fully updated, this third edition contains entirely new chapters on the political environment and Germany's economic development, the recent radical tax reforms, a new legal section and thoroughly updated information on the tax and accounting regimes.Contents include: Economic and Business Conditions; Business Structures and Practices; Banking and Financial Services; Accounting and Taxation Issues; Legal Issues; Appendices: Business Agencies; Economic Incentives; German Chambers of Commerce. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Not Practical
I had high expectations for this book as it's from an "expert." But he wrote as an expert who hasn't done collections before. It was mostly just old, old theories. Waste of time reading & money. That's just my opinion. ... Read more

Book Description

Who controls markets and profits from them? Does competition or monopoly result in a more beneficial economy? How can the economic playing field become fairer or more biased in either direction? The study of industrial organization extends to the core of these most important questions of economics. Throughout the field's history, various clashing schools of thought have attempted to sort through these complex issues, examining both abstract theory and real-life cases. The Fifth Edition of this widely used, highly regarded text includes coverage of dramatic changes in the field. Shepherd & Shepherd provide broad, balanced coverage of topics without showing preference to any single point of view, encouraging students to think independently. This emphasis on independent judgment is evident throughout the book, with discussion of structure placed before performance to assist the reader in thinking about causation. Topics are organized for maximum flexibility, with distinct chapters covering case studies, antitrust and regulation policy, and capital markets. ... Read more

Book Description

Bringing you the latest statistics, data and information on China, this guide is an invaluable companion for the seasoned entrepreneur or new investor. It not only provides a general account of China - her history, people and culture but also, in-depth descriptions and analyses of ChinasMunicipalities,Provinces,Autonomous Regions andSpecial Administrative Regions. ... Read more

Book Description

An up-close and personal look at the heroic immigrant women who make families, communities, and society tick by working a triple shift: caring for their families, toiling in sweatshops and factories, and building movements for social change. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Sweatshops from the workers' perspective
I teach a course on Women and Work and Miriam Ching Louie's Sweatshop Warriors is the first book I have found that really describes sweatshops from the workers' perspectives, as agents rather than victims. The students really got it. I plan to use the book in this course from now on.

A more sinister side of globalization
Miriam Ching Yoon Louie has a literary talent in exposing the ill effects of globalization on poor women of color in the American garment industry. Focusing on Chinese, Korean, and Mexican immigrants she documents how their labor is continuously being exploited without regard to their personal well-being. Transnational corporations seek their labor because it is cheap. It is these women who are the backbones of the forces of globalization and their stories need to be told. An added strength of this book is that the author doesn't just focus on the negative structural aspects but she also includes multiple instances of how these workers create social solidarity and fight for social change in their favor, even when up against the odds. Her personal involvement in these social movements is an added benefit. These poor women of color both produce and reproduce globalization on the local and global scale. It leaves one with the belief that there is hope after all for a fair and just world. This book will make you reevaluate the 'promises' of free trade agreements and economic growth. As one group prospers there is surely another group being disadvantaged. Overall, this book is accessible especially in discussions on the feminization of labor and migration that is not cluttered with jargon. Go ahead and take a gamble. I hope that it will alter your social stance on these important issues as it reinforced mine.

In My Personal Top Ten
During my vacation, I've been reading "Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take on the Global Factory" by Miriam Ching Yoon Louie. Miriam has a multi-decade organizing history with low income women of color. She is the co-founder of the Women of Color Resource Center in Berkeley, and author of an amazing trainers' manual called WEdGE" Women's Education in the Global Economy."

"Sweatshop Warriors" is one of my personal top ten books on radical organizing. It looks at transnational sweatshops through the eyes of Korean, Chinese and Mexican women forced to leave their homes of origin to take super exploited labor jobs in the world's sweatshops, ending up in the garment rows of NY, Oakland, LA, El Paso, etc. And there they have stood and fought. Against incredible odds, they've led international campaigns against the sweatshops industries, formed multi-purpose women workers centers, dealt with men in their families who were sometimes less than supportive of their activism, and learned to be world traveling organizers.

The author mixes political economy, analysis, history, and the herstories of the women organizers she has interviewed. Race/class/gender/nationality -- all come into play in the lives and organizing work of these incredible women. ... Read more

Book Description

Contributors to Human Rights, Labor Rights, and International Trade provide the first comprehensive view of labor rights in the international trade system and the avenues open to worker rights claims in the global economy under international human rights instruments, U.S. trade laws, free trade agreements, labor rights litigation, and corporate codes of conduct. They address worker rights from the standpoints of human rights concerns, trade and development policy, and labor law principles. Developments in the global economy - including the European Union and the ILO; NAFTA; GATT and the new WTO; and the Japanese organization of the Pacific Rim - create issues regarding migration patterns, resource conservation and environmental protection, foreign policy, and labor. Combining the rarefied atmosphere of human rights theory with the nitty-gritty details of worker organizing, this book addresses the issue of distinguishing which worker and trade union rights are fundamental human rights and which are really assertions of privileges or claims for benefits. ... Read more

Book Description

Inside the Minds: The Green Company is an authoritative, insider's perspective on the strategic thinking behind leading and evolving an environmentally-conscious company. The first of its kind, this title features groundbreaking CEOs on the environmental benefits and economic rewards of operating an eco-friendly corporation.From the necessity of contamination clean-up, to the use of wind-driven power generation, hitting on the essentiality of taking pro-active and protective measures and suggesting ways in which to impact and influence corporate mindset, these authorities offer practical and adaptable strategies for any organization to achieve true environmental awareness. With a comprehensive overview of the current shape and future state of the environment and an honest look at the role of Corporate America in preserving and protecting our greatest resource, authors identify the finer points around such critical issues at present, and what will hold true into the future.The different niches represented and the breadth of perspectives presented enable readers to get inside some of the great innovative minds of today, as experts offer up their thoughts around how to live, operate, and function – successfully and profitably – in an eco-friendly manner. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Gaining new priorities & perspectives
The CEOs that have given their perspective on running eco-friendly corporations have done a great job at opening the minds of their readers to new methods of preserving the environment. I particularly enjoyed the excerpt from the Princeton Power corporation and will certainly recommend this book to all of my friends. ... Read more

Book Description

Becoming an educated and satisfied consumer can make your life considerably easier. By building a solid foundation of knowledge, you put yourself in position to know when and how to defend your consumer rights. In Understanding Consumer Rights you will find vital information to help you make sense of your rights. This book gives you a first step toward many important concepts, breaks them down into manageable parts, and provides some simple tools you need to help you try to get a fair deal. smart tips help you recognize pitfalls and take advantage of opportunities-whether through the Internet or at your corner store. Increased interest in do-it-yourself money management is a defining trend of our modern world, and the DK Essential Finance series provides the perfect personal finance library to help take advantage of this phenomenon. These outstanding guides provide a practical and impartial resource to guide you through important financial decisions. Useful questionnaires pinpoint one's financial status while easy-to-use charts and graphs help track cash flow, cut through the complexities of financial lingo, and gain the confidence needed to build real financial security. Readers can learn to invest online, live debt free, plan for retirement, or pay for a child's education. ... Read more

Book Description

This book investigates the relationship between corporate governance, market structure and innovation. The editors observe that a number of radical mutations are occurring in industries that have played a crucial role in sustaining and fostering the pace of technological progress.

Specifically, three classes of institutional discontinuities are discussed: privatization processes, mergers and acquisitions and liberalization of the market. The authors show that the effects of such institutional discontinuities may seriously affect, in the short term, the market value of the firm, and in the medium/long term, the performance of the national system of innovation as a whole.

The book outlines the theoretical background to the empirical analyses that are later developed and illustrated using original longitudinal data set from US and European markets. It goes on to present selected empirical evidence drawn from different industries, which provide the reader with an interesting insight into how major changes in corporate governance and in market structures have affected innovation activities in high tech sectors. Finally, the authors discuss the technology policy implications that are derived from the evidences illustrated. ... Read more