Book Description
The long-awaited memoir from one of the most celebrated modern dancers of the past fifty years: the story of her own remarkable career, of the formative years of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and of the two brilliant, iconoclastic, and forward-thinking artists at its center—Merce Cunningham and John Cage.
From its inception in the l950s until her departure in the l970s, Carolyn Brown was a major dancer in the Cunningham company and part of the vibrant artistic community of downtown New York City out of which it grew. She writes about embarking on her career with Cunningham at a time when he was a
celebrated performer but a virtually unknown choreographer. She describes the heady exhilaration—and dire financial straits—of the company’s early days, when composer Cage was musical director and Robert Rauschenberg designed lighting, sets and costumes; and of the struggle for acceptance of their controversial, avant-garde dance. With unique insight, she explores Cunningham’s technique, choreography, and experimentation with compositional procedures influenced by Cage. And she probes the personalities of these two men: the reticent, moody, often secretive Cunningham, and the effusive, fun-loving, enthusiastic Cage.
Chance and Circumstance is an intimate chronicle of a crucial era in modern dance, and a revelation of the intersection of the worlds of art, music, dance, and theater that is Merce Cunningham’s extraordinary hallmark.
Customer Reviews:
A brilliant insider's view of Cunningham and Cage.......2007-08-12
Merce Cunningham and John Cage are two of the most significant figures in dance and music in the second half of the 20th century. Cage, who is aruguably the most influential artist of the second half of the century, has been much written about, and was himself a prolific author. Cunningham has also published influential books, and the two have been the subject of numerous documentaries. But not until now has there been an insider's view of what it was like to be an intimate part of the Cage-Cunningham inner circle, a world that included artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, composers Earl Brown, Morton Feldman, and David Tudor, and many others. Brown has written an honest, sincere account of what life was like touring the US in a VW bus with Cage at the wheel, stopping for picnics along the way. Moreover, while Brown clearly adores both Cage and Cunningham, she doesn't hesitate to provide occasionally hair-raising accounts of things said and done by these two artists that seem incongruous with the myths built up around them. In that regard, Brown renders them human in a way I have never previosuly encountered. Reading that Cage, while in his cups one night, held forth on how turned on he was by Merce, should finally set the record straight (pardon the pun) about Cage's sexuality. The book is a treasury of great anecdotes about Brown's life on the road with an astonishing group of artists, and I felt privileged to have been privy to the journey. It is also a savvy analysis of Cunningham's choreography from the perspective of someone who actually danced it. This book should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in understanding the lives and work of Cage and Cunningham.
A Major Document.......2007-06-27
The wonderful thing about this book is that it gives a very close-up view of the Cage/Cunningham world, especially in the early years of the Cunningham Dance Company. It also presents the two major figures, John Cage and Merce Cunningham, in a critical light. We see them both as the towering creative forces that the outer world knows, as well as the difficult, moody, and complicated people they really are, or were.
The book is exhausting in the way it reveals Brown's life as a dancer, and the tensions and struggles of the Company. Perhaps it could be a few pages shorter, but (in the first half of the book) the insights into the world of modern dance in general, and the NY avant-garde in the 1950's and 60's in particular is fascinating and valuable.
It's also a good example of why people should keep detailed journals.
If only this had been published 30 years ago.......2007-05-13
This book is an excellent opportunity to examine Merce Cunningham's work. Carolyn Brown was probably his favorite dancer. She was intimately connected to Merce and John Cage. Many will come away with a more real understanding of what "chance" means to this work. This is very much a dancer's view of things. I only wonder why it took her thirty-five years to write this book. She confesses to the book deal being offered and signed almost as soon as she retired. There are telling comments on State support of the arts and on unions.
revisiting merce with CB.......2007-05-08
As a former student and long time friend of Ms. Brown and Merce Cunningham, I was moved and delighted to revisit the struggles, perseverance and creativity that went into daily life during the years Ms. Brown spent in the Cunningham Company and to understand, from her viewpoint, the inner workings of Merce's choreographic process. I learned so much and appreciate the knowledge, skill and levels of artistry, friendship and as well as travail that made those years so vital. Thanks, CB
Amazon.com
At the age of 5, Malika Oufkir, eldest daughter of General Oufkir, was adopted by King Muhammad V of Morocco and sent to live in the palace as part of the royal court. There she led a life of unimaginable privilege and luxury alongside the king's own daughter. King Hassan II ascended the throne following Muhammad V's death, and in 1972 General Oufkir was found guilty of treason after staging a coup against the new regime, and was summarily executed. Immediately afterward, Malika, her mother, and her five siblings were arrested and imprisoned, despite having no prior knowledge of the coup attempt.
They were first held in an abandoned fort, where they ate moderately well and were allowed to keep some of their fine clothing and books. Conditions steadily deteriorated, and the family was eventually transferred to a remote desert prison, where they suffered a decade of solitary confinement, torture, starvation, and the complete absence of sunlight. Oufkir's horrifying descriptions of the conditions are mesmerizing, particularly when contrasted with her earlier life in the royal court, and many graphic images will long haunt readers. Finally, teetering on the edge of madness and aware that they had been left to die, Oufkir and her siblings managed to tunnel out using their bare hands and teaspoons, only to be caught days later. Her account of their final flight to freedom makes for breathtaking reading. Stolen Lives is a remarkable book of unfathomable deprivation and the power of the human will to survive.
Book Description
A gripping memoir that reads like a political thriller--the story of Malika Oufkir's turbulent and remarkable life. Born in 1953, Malika Oufkir was the eldest daughter of General Oufkir, the King of Morocco's closest aide. Adopted by the king at the age of five, Malika spent most of her childhood and adolescence in the seclusion of the court harem, one of the most eligible heiresses in the kingdom, surrounded by luxury and extraordinary privilege.
Then, on August 16, 1972, her father was arrested and executed after an attempt to assassinate the king. Malika, her five younger brothers and sisters. and her mother were immediately imprisoned in a desert penal colony. After fifteen years, the last ten of which they spent locked up in solitary cells, the Oufkir children managed to dig a tunnel with their bare hands and make an audacious escape. Recaptured after five days, Malika was finally able to leave Morocco and begin a new life in exile in 1996.
A heartrending account in the face of extreme deprivation and the courage with which one family faced its fate, Stolen Lives is an unforgettable story of one woman's journey to freedom.
Customer Reviews:
Incredible Story - Deserved Better Editor.......2007-09-10
I am very disappointed in some of the reviews that I have read about this book; thank goodness they are the minority. Yes, I agree that it was poorly edited, and the story that was being relayed really could have been told better. It disturbs me that some of the reviewers almost appeared to attack the author. This lady is not an author/writer; she's no Stephen King or Dan Brown. Those authors have the advantage of fiction on their respective sides. Malika Oufkir had no such advantage. She is a survivor who had to actually live the hell that she describes in her book.
Imagine being a political prisoner - your only crime being that you were related to someone who either did something terrible against the country or "allegedly" did so - you are living in conditions of squalor. Your captors want you to die, but don't want to necessarily pull the trigger. You are starved, not allowed outside, not allowed to see or feel the sun, and deprived of the most basic information such as the date and time. You watch your sister pick the rat droppings from pieces of stale bread before "happily" consuming it. You watch your three-year old brother's life as a political prisoner. That's what you lived for most of two decades. Finally, years after being released, you get the courage to tell your story so that the world has a chance to know what you have been through, and that political imprisonment is not the cake walk or country club behind bars that it has been touted through the years. For months, you fight through the tears and the recollections of the circumstances and events that above all, you mostly want to forget. Then, proud that you were able to clear that final hurdle, you read the book reviews on Amazon only to find that one reader finds the book "difficult to believe" and even "boring." The nerve of some people to sit in their air conditioned homes with their refrigerator and freezer full, to sit at their computer with access to the world, to not be able to look past the flaws of the book to see the real story. If this was fiction, I could see the criticism, but given the storyline and the simple fact that it was fact, I simply cannot justify attacking the author about the quality of the book. Her experience has forever changed her and her reaction to life itself.
Bottom line - this was a riveting story that could have been a riveting book. I give the story itself 5+ stars. I hope Ms. Oufkir and her family are proud that they survived such an incredulous nightmare. I was left wanting more information, but I personally feel fortunate to have received what information I got; Ms. Oufkir didn't have to put her ordeal in writing. The editing gets one star. The editor and publisher failed Ms. Oufkir and should be ashamed that her story was not given the very best attention to detail. It almost seems as though the book was rushed to go to print, and Ms. Oufkir's story suffered the consequences. And that is a real travesty.
Survival Story.......2007-08-30
Because of her father's treachery in attempting to assassinate the king of Morocco, Malika, her mother, her siblings and two family friends are imprisoned in the desert. For years they live in tiny cells infested with bugs and mice who battle them for their near-starvation rations. Finally they make a desperate move to tunnel out of their prison and alert the international news media of their imprisonment, which puts sufficient pressure on the king to free them.
Malika's life wasn't always so bad, though. In fact, when she was five, the king adopted her to live in the palace as a companion to his daughter. Although she missed her family and felt trapped in her life as royalty, Malika was well fed and well brought up and had all of the luxuries life could hand out to a child. This makes her subsequent imprisonment all the more shocking, especially as it is at the hands of her adopted family.
I found this book a bit scattered. The author would state in passing something she would then address later, which gave me the feeling of a great deal of jumping around. She also tries a bit too hard to make a connection between life in the palace and life in prison, which I thought was more than a small stretch. Although the author argues that she was never really "free" to do what she wanted while living with the royals, what child ever is free to do what he or she wants? There were few incidents of her being treated cruelly while growing up, and she wanted for nothing, yet she tried to paint herself as a poor sad little child. This tended to make me feel less sorry for her, rather than more.
The part of the book dealing with the family's prison life was horrifying almost beyond belief, yet was dealt with in such a casual tone of voice that I found it hard to get as outraged and sad as I felt I should have been. Something about the tone of the book just didn't strike the right note with me.
Boring Beyond Belief.......2007-07-04
There is nothing "gripping" about this book. The beginning of the book, the tale of life with the King, is interesting. Once the family is arrested and incarcerated, it becomes boring beyond belief - and this is the part of the book that should be riveting! Instead, I found the narration totally self-centered and the "story" absolutely colorless. I quit reading about page 138 (just after the escape) because at that point I could have cared less what happened to this family. The travesty is that these events were real and I should feel outrage and compassion for this family. Instead, I'm annoyed I spent money on this horribly written/edited/translated book!
Stolen Lives.......2007-05-28
I found this story to be an inspirational account of a young girl's struggle from the palace to a jail cell. The orginial controversy of punnishing children for their father's actions developed the story into a thrilling drama. It was a compelling and gripping story, but they way it was written was a little off. Some of the sentances were difficult to read because of the way the words were written. I did not like how the writer kept jumping to the past and present to explain events. This made it confusing to determine what details were current and which already occured.
Disliked.......2007-05-18
I read the book for a book club. I was disappointed. The story was very self-centered. Also,difficult to believe, but a bit boring.
Book Description
Dr. James Canton, a renown futurist, CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, and Fortune 1000 advisor, charts a course to steer you through the volatile changes that lie 5, 10, and 20 years ahead. The Extreme Future is this generation's Future Shock, Alvin Toffler's classic book on what's next and how to prepare for tomorrow.
Get ready for fast, radical, and complex change. Get ready for the Extreme Future. Our world is constantly buffeted by new and dramatic changes that we can't fully grasp. No one is fully prepared for the challenges, crises, and risks that lie ahead. The Extreme Future is a blueprint for what's next and how to navigate these changes.
Get ready for fast, radical and complex change. Get ready for the Extreme Future. Our world is constantly buffeted by new and dramatic changes that we can't fully grasp. No one is fully prepared for the challenges, crises and risks that lie ahead. The Extreme Future is a blueprint for what's next and how to navigate these changes.
An advisor to three White House's spanning more than 30 years, Dr. Canton challenges us that with the right information about future trends it is possible to identify probable outcomes. It is possible, with the right information to navigate the Extreme Future.
The book covers the following major trends:
* How climate change and energy trends will reshape the planet
* How shifting population trends will transform the workforce
* How radical innovation trends will competitively drive business
* How astounding medicine trends will enhance people's life
* How dangerous terrorism trends will threaten the individual.
* How the rise of China will bring on a new global power struggle
The answers to these questions are not only available, but contained within these pages. The Extreme Future is the forecasting handbook for the twenty-first century.
Customer Reviews:
Prediction for the Future: This Book Flops.......2007-05-29
I was very disappointed with this book. Between his shameless plugs for his speaking engagements and various other activities, the author pulls together various thoughts, statistics, and projections that could easily be synthesized by reading a few choice periodicals. If you are a reader in search of innovative thoughts about the future that may help guide your worldview, company, or investments, I would advise you to look elsewhere. I will not read another work by this author.
It will be fun to see how true this turns out to be.......2006-11-29
As I read this book I am reminded of the old saying that 'forecasting the future is easy, it's being right that's hard.'
Dr. Canton breaks down his forecasts into ten areas. Some of them I find very good. Some of them I find OK. Some of them I disagree with. Some of them I'd replace with others.
His view of the future of the individual, Chapter 10, I find totally agreeable. He says that protecting the freedom and rights of the individual is going to be difficult. I absolutely agree. There will be a great deal of pressure to restrict rights (the so called Patriot's Act) in the name of security. The Democrats would like to impose gun control. The Republicans would like to impose abortion control.
His view on energy I find half right. He is right that we are running out of energy. Oil will get progressively more expensive. Then he says, 'Hydrogen is the most plentiful gas in the universe...It's abundant, reliable, renewable, clean and secure because hydrogen is everywhere, America wouldn't have to rely on foreign suppliers.' Yes, but hydrogen isn't a fuel, it's a way to store energy. You have to put more energy into separating hydrogen from oxygen (where it's mostly found, i.e. water) than you get back when you burn it. Nuclear power is the only forseeable place to get the energy to put into hydrogen, and we still have problems of where to store the old fuel rods, do you want them in your back yard?
He sees medicine making all kinds of advances that will lead to longer and healthier lives. I'm not so sure. AIDS is likely to move up to #3 in killing people in the next few years, and there's no cure in sight. Drug resistent forms of TB, malaria, etc. are spreading. New potential diseases like avian flu. If you're interested I'd recommend 'The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance' by Laurie Garrett. It's a bit old, but still the best on the subject.
This is a fun book to read. It will be even more fun to see how correct it turns out to be.
Highly speculative.......2006-11-09
The author makes many speculative and outlandish predictions of the future. His sheer number of intuitive predictions will allow him to be right on many matters, but very off on some.
What is lacking are analysis and technical details of why the future is the way the author claims will be. For example, he claims lack of energy supply and technological progress will bring forth an age of hydrogen powered cars and fusion nuclear reactors. Yet, he provides no technical reasons why these two technologies will dominate the energy industry. Just how will we manage to produce hydrogen in large concentration and quantities which will be cost effective when it takes MORE energy to produce concenttrated hydrogen today than the energy value of the hydrogen themselves? Also, since when was controlled nuclear fusion reactors even possible? An explaination of how we will overcome the technical hurdles is missing throughout this book.
Some of the claims are downright outlandish. For example, the author claims we will have teleporter which will transfer objects throughout the globe. Again, the missing piece is of any scientific backing or explaination.
Some of the predictions are based on facts, and therefore, have strong predictive value. For example, the author claims that we will have a skilled worker shortage well into 2025 and beyond. This is based on a solid demographic data which indicates that we will have a shrinking workforce of suitable age in America.
Finally, the author is a PhD, but he never says on what subject. He also seems to compare himself to Da Vinci.....He claims many of his previous predictions were right on target. But I imagine many of his predictions were dead off target as well. The sheer number of predictions in this book will allow the author to claim that he is a futurist because many of his predictions will probably come true. Just don't expect him to backup his claims with solid science, facts, or analysis.
Fantastic Feast of Ideas.......2006-09-22
The Extreme Future is a fantastic feast of ideas. So many books about the future are predictable or simply boring. This book is a whole other experience. Canton's mind is a non-stop treasure trove of complex insights, wild ideas, brain-stretching posssibilities and just plain fun. I wholeheartedly recommend The Extreme Future to anyone who would like to step outside the box and look at everything - from global politics to mind control to enhanced humans - in some pretty incredible ways.
Average customer rating:
- A true artist.
- Through the Looking Glass
- Light and Fun
- Review of R. Mesnier's book on serving for 25 years as the White House pastry chef
- self-serving
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All the Presidents' Pastries: Twenty-Five Years in the White House, A Memoir
Roland Mesnier , and
Christian Malard
Manufacturer: Flammarion
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Similar Items:
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White House Chef: Eleven Years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen
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Dessert University: More Than 300 Spectacular Recipes and Essential Lessons from White House Pastry Chef Roland Mesnier
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Talking with My Mouth Full: Crab Cakes, Bundt Cakes, and Other Kitchen Stories
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Eating Royally: Recipes and Remembrances from a Palace Kitchen
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Real Life at the White House: 200 Years of Daily Life at America's Most Famous Residence
ASIN: 208030559X
Release Date: 2007-02-13 |
Book Description
This extraordinary success-story-told by the hero himself-of a young French pastry chef who climbed his way to the top, embodies the great American dream. After working at the Savoy in London, the George V in Paris, the Princess in Bermuda, and the Homestead in Virginia, Roland Mesnier took on the job of a lifetime as pastry chef to the White House. He provides behind-the-scenes insight into the characters, tastes, and obsessions of the five presidents and first ladies he served during his 25 years in Washington. Having witnessed major world events from the hub of the world's superpower, Mesnier has unique perspective on both crises and celebrations. He recounts stories such as Carter's incessant battle for the return of American hostages in Tehran, the aftermath of the attempt to assassinate Reagan, Bush senior's doubts after the war in Kuwait, and the shock of September 11. He uncovers intimate details such as Mrs. Reagan's bad moods and Prince Charles's embarrassment at not knowing how to use a tea bag. Fiercely loyal to each of the first families, Mesnier's bipartisan message is positive and inspirational. Twelve easy-to-follow recipes include the favorite desserts of presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.
Customer Reviews:
A true artist........2007-09-02
When I checked this book out from the library, my intention was only to check out the recipes in the back. But I started reading Roland Mesnier's life story, and found myself totally engrossed in it. What an inspirational life story this is.... Mr. Mesnier grew up poor in France, and through talent, determination, and a lot of hard work, he became probably one of the best pastry chefs on the planet.
Several things stood out for me in this book. The first was how interesting his early life was.. how he grew up with basically nothing, became an apprentice, perfected his craft, and continually pushed himself to become better and better--even during his later days at the White House. He never once rested on his laurels, although he easily could have.
The second thing that stood out for me was how he regarded each of the "first families" he worked for. He clearly grew very attached to whoever he worked for, and through his eyes I was able to see the various Presidents and First Ladies as the normal human beings they are. That's an interesting perspective you don't usually see.
Thirdly, I could barely keep my mouth from watering while reading about all the amazing desserts that were prepared over Mr. Mesnier's 40-something year career! Note: don't read this if you are hungry.
One last note: One of the reviewers mentioned a left-leaning slant to Mr. Mesnier's politics. I simply did not see that. In fact, he seemed particularly attached to the family of Bush Sr. And when the Iraq war was looming, he was in full support of it, so much so that he couldn't believe that his home country of France was against it. There are many other examples, but the point is, Mr. Mesnier was very loyal to whomever he served, whether Democrat or Republican.
Through the Looking Glass.......2007-07-02
In All the Presidents' Pastries, Roland Mesnier provides a glimpse into a hidden world
of White House power through the eyes of its renowned former pastry chef. For those of
us outside the concrete street barriers of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the cocktail
circuits of policy wonks, pundits, and political celebrity, his memoir makes
us feels privy to select secrets of the rich and famous even as he respectfully shrouds
prominent indiscretions and missteps. They were there, and no doubt they would offer
tantalizing fodder for curious gossip mongers. Instead Mesnier's enthusiastic recollections
of his White House adventures read as delectably as President's Reagan's favorite
chocolate mousse tastes rich, but without the bite and heat of the crystallized ginger
melded within the mix. For those seeking to recreate executives' favorites, there is a
small collection of recipes at the end of the book.
Similar to Mesnier's first successful book, Dessert University, one discovers within the pages of All the President's Pastries, a mind that thrives on continual challenge, creates success through extensive thought and preparation, and moves on when an occasional snag clutters his mindscape. In preparation for Tony Blair's White House visit in 1998, Mesnier envisioned London's parliamentary clock, Big Ben, as the dessert's stunning chocolate centerpiece. Unaware that logistics and time would become formidable obstacles to execution of the Big Ben replica, he "decided to take the bull by the horns and invent a new way of molding chocolate." In his characteristic humility, Mesnier shares that he and his staff "pulled off this minor tour de force thanks to a great deal of extremely fast work"; therefore, saving themselves from a metaphorical Go Straight to the Tower of London jail card.
I hope you all will enjoy reading Mesnier's Upstairs/Downstairs disclosure of White House anecdotes to discover the convivial yet complex Roland I know.
Light and Fun.......2007-06-01
I enjoyed reading about the pastries that were prepared in the White House. It was very light hearted reading and I thought that Mesnier's life journey from a small village in France to the White House made for good reading. When I noticed that there were glossy colored pages in the middle of the book, I became very excited. All along he states that the desserts he prepares are photographed. Yet, most of the photographs in the center of the book were of the presidents and their wives. Every glossy page could have been a picture of a delectable delight. What a disappointment.
Review of R. Mesnier's book on serving for 25 years as the White House pastry chef.......2007-05-28
Roland Mesnier's book is on his career as a pastry chef, from his early years working in France, Germany, England and Bermuda and culminating as serving for 25 years as the White House pastry chef was a good read. He is a talented and driven man. I enjoyed the book for its historical context (the presidents and their families and significant events that took place during their presidencies) to detailed descriptions of his fantastic dessert creations.
self-serving.......2007-05-22
After reading the excellent White House Chef, I was looking forward to reading this chef's account of his time in the White House. I found him to be a self-serving braggard and at the end of the day this book was a waste of time. He also made no bones about his political leanings.
Book Description
Jock Sturges Twenty-Five Years is a unique addition to the growing family of Jock Sturges publications. It is the first that presents an overview of his classic images made between the years 1978-2003 with personal commentary by the photographer opposite each reproduction. Beautifully printed in a limited first edition of 3000 copies.
Customer Reviews:
A remarkable book.......2005-11-26
A remarkable book for several reasons: the selection of images are all strong and the personal commentary by the photographer placed across from each full page reproduction is an insightfull and intimate dimension that distinguishing this publication from Mr. Sturges' other books. Also the reproductions are some of the best I have seen of his work and glow with a warmth and depth. This is a small edition of 3000 copies and I feel the price of $50 reflects the high quality of printing and paper used. A must-have for serious book collectors of photographic nudes and portraiture.
Falls short.......2005-05-11
I like Sturges work and own several of his images as well as all of the books that have been published on his oeuvre. This retrospective is wonderfully enlightening with the artist notes tucked neatly aside the twenty-five plates. Curiously, all but four of the plates are of work from 1991 forward. The presentation is meticulous and well crafted. However, I simply cannot understand why the book is softbound. For the price, I expected more, as a photography book collector, I am deeply disappointed.
Art in Photographic Form.......2005-03-14
Jock Sturges has arguably done more for the art of the modern nude than any other. His controversial use of young girls and women is superceded by his platonic relationships with the girls and their families over many years of taking photographs.
This book highlights the best of the last 25 years. Although I felt the book was somewhat limited in what they determined to be the "best", (and the book somewhat pricey for a soft cover)the photographs are beautifully presented in this book. What's great about the book is the few paragraphs that tell of the intimate nature of each photo. Recommended if a Sturges fan.
It's expensive but very good, no regrets owning it........2005-01-29
As the description says this is a review of 25 years of Jock Sturges work. Anyone who has seen Mr. Sturges photographs or his books will find photos of several of his subjects taken over the years- Fanny, Misty Dawn, Vanessa- they're all here.
Most of the pictures were beautiful although a few did strike me almost as snapshots, even those showed the photographer's skill. I liked the way he told a little something about each one in the accompanying caption. You'll learn something about the subjects in each one that isn't usually found in other Sturges books.
At $50 the price is somewhat expensive but at least you're buying some great photographic art. I wish I'd bought my copy here at Amazon, my source charged me $7.39 for shipping, no cost shipping is available here. Any serious Jock Sturges collector ought to buy this one.
Average customer rating:
- Computer marketing explained in an entertaining way
- A grim, but highly instructive and entertaining story
- Reading what you already know but didn't realise
- It's for anyone in marketing
- New, updated edition of a classic
|
In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition
Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman
Manufacturer: Apress
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Similar Items:
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User Interface Design for Programmers
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The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky
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Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity
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Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software
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Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
ASIN: 1590597214 |
Book Description
In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition is National Lampoon meets Peter Drucker. It's a funny and well-written business book that takes a look at some of the most influential marketing and business philosophies of the last twenty years. Through the dark glass of hindsight, it provides an educational and entertaining look at why these philosophies didn't work for many of the country's largest and best-known high-tech companies.
Marketing wizard Richard Chapman takes you on a hilarious ride in this book, which is richly illustrated with cartoons and reproductions of many of the actual campaigns used at the time. Filled with personal anecdotes spanning Chapman's remarkable career (he was present at many now-famous meetings and events), In Search of Stupidity, Second Edition examines the best of the worst marketing ideas and business decisions in the last twenty years of the technology industry.
The second edition includes new chapters on Google and on how to avoid stupidity, plus the extensive analyses of all chapters from the first edition. You'll want to get a copy because it
- Features an interesting preface and interview with Joel Spolsky of "Joel on Software"
- Offers practical advice on avoiding PR disaster
- Features actual pictures of some of the worst PR and marketing material ever created
- Is highly readable and funny
- Includes theme-based cartoons for every chapter
Download Description
In Search of Stupidity is National Lampoon meets Peter Drucker. A funny and well written business book that takes a look at some of the most influential marketing and business philosophies of the last twenty years and, through the dark glass of hindsight, provides an educational and vastly entertaining examination of why they didn't work the for many of the country's largest and best known high tech companies. Make no mistake; most of them did not work.
Richly illustrated with cartoons and reproductions of many of the actual campaigns used at the time, marketing wizard Richard Chapman takes readers on a hilarious ride through the last twenty years. Filled with personal anecdotes spanning Chapman's remarkable career (he was present at many now famous meetings and events), In Search of Stupidity is a no-holds-barred look at the best of the worst hopeless marketing ideas and business decisions in the last twenty years of the technology industry.
"The history of marketing and technology is riddled with cautionary stories that stick up like dung covered punji sticks. Read this, and avoid stepping on one."
Jeff 'Hemos' Bates
Director OSDN Online
Exec. Editor Slashdot.org
"Rick Chapman knows where the bodies are buried -- when most people have forgotten there was even a murder. This history of tech marketing disasters is well-written, enjoyable, and gets its facts straight."
Jonathan Angel
Senior Editor, West Coast
Adweek's TECHNOLOGY MARKETING magazine
"In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disaster" gives us an amusing (and sometimes embarrassing) array of anecdotes of how far we've come (and not come) in high technology, as well as the path we've tread along the way. This is a fun read, with many invaluable lessons."
Brenda Bennett South
Vice President
Weber Shandwick
"In Search of Stupidity is an invaluable history lesson in how to avoid monumental marketing mistakes that are unfortunately common in the software industry. Perhaps caused by the lack of institutional knowledge Rick points out that is caused by the youth of the industry, the only thing that would be stupid now is to not read the book! If you don't do it for your career, do it out of fear that Rick will highlight you in a sequel!"
Alyssa Dver
BusinessWeek special sections contributor
"'In Search of Stupidity' is a delightful and deceptively useful chronicle of what went wrong in the high-tech industry. Having followed many of these companies and products over the years, I'd often wondered why such smart people made such weird choices. Rick Chapman has many of the answers. Anyone who has ever yelled at the computer screen will enjoy this book."
James Fallows
Former editor in chief of US News and World Report and a regular writer for The Atlantic.
Customer Reviews:
Computer marketing explained in an entertaining way.......2007-05-27
As a techie, I find most marketing books boring. This one was lively enough to keep me interested. The author uses plenty of hyperbole and sarcasm, so it's sometimes hard to tell fact from opinion, but in general, his analyses ring true.
A grim, but highly instructive and entertaining story.......2007-04-04
I have been in IT since '79 and have seen all the companies Rick talks about come and go. The errors that were made, and still -are- made are mind boggling. All these proverbs about history repeating itself? They are right, when you don't learn from mistakes!
Reading what you already know but didn't realise.......2007-03-08
What I liked most about this book that it puts a lot of known "history" in perspective, especially with regards to Microsoft.
The author puts a lot of humor into this book and understands how to put things into perspective. I do hope that there will be a third revised edition in the coming years.
It's for anyone in marketing.......2007-02-08
The book is well-done and has some of the best software anecdotes... and discussions of marketing... that I have read in quite some time. I'm not in the software biz, but i have always been fascinated by it... and how its personalities can enhance, and in the cases you cited, undermine what are often very good products. I have been a marketer all of my career, and i felt that the paragraph on p 276 starting with "And then an awful realization..." was one of the best descriptions of what B2B marketing managers face and how difficult marketing management can be that i have ever encountered. I recommend the book highly for both entertainment and for marketing insights.
New, updated edition of a classic.......2007-01-15
This is the second edition of Merril R. Chapman's best-seller In Search of Stupidity. To the first edition's collection of episodes of strategic blunders, marketing disasters and outright hubris on part of various high-technology companies during the 80's and the 90's, the new edition adds a few notable episodes. Companies listed include: IBM, Digital Research, Apple, Microsoft, MicroPro, Ashton-Tate, Siebel, Borland, Intel, Motorola, Google, Novell, Netscape, and various dot-coms from the Internet bubble times.
Apart from being a fun and enjoyable read, In Search of Stupidity is also a valuable resource for high-tech entrepreneurs, marketers and geeks wanting to turn their technical prowess into a profit. There's nothing like learning from the mistakes of others in order to avoid repeating them, and one of the merits of this book is that it does not limit itself to making fun of clueless companies, but extracts and digests from their tales a number of immediately useful advice.
So you can expect to learn how to avoid the same sort of positioning mistakes that doomed MicroPro, how not to inimicate the developer community that constitutes the lifeblood of your products, like Ashton-Tate constantly did, how to avoid damaging your relationships with the press, and many other useful tidbits. In this respect, the Stupid Analysis chapter at the end of the book is especially useful, in case you missed some of the more subtle lessons that were contained in the narrative presented in previous chapters.
In summary, this books is valuable both to entrepreneurs and managers, and to geeks who want to enter marketing, management or start their own company. Even if you are content with keeping a purely technical role, should you start recognizing the signs of stupidity on part of your company, you could at least be prepared to polish up your resume.
To be honest, it could be argued that some of the most egregious screw-ups described in the book were, at least in part, due to sheer bad luck, and that hindsight is always 20/20. Still I think that the stories told here teach some extremely valuable lessons. External circumstances alone cannot account for all that happened; it takes much stupidity and arrogance to turn unfavorable events into total disasters.
If you want to be picky, there is a couple of instances where the message of the book sounds a bit off. The first one can be found in the story of Google's fight with [...] over the issue of privacy, and its supposed bowing to the censorship imposed by the Chinese government. You can argue how much you like that Google acted stupidly in these circumstances. Its behavior might have tarnished its ethical image--"Don't be evil", remember?. However, it doesn't seem to have affected Google in any serious way; few people remember the episodes and Google is going as strong as ever. Compared to the other examples found in the book, this is a case of very mild stupidity, if at all, and it looks like Chapman seriously wanted to pick on Google but couldn't find any real damning evidence.
The second point is in chapter 12, The Strange Case of Dr. Open and Mr. Proprietary, where the author traces the beginnings of the Free Software movement to the first hackers who started out by illegally copying Microsoft's Altair BASIC. If one didn't know better, one might start to think that Free Software pioneers were just a bunch of freeloaders, if not thieves. In the rest of the chapter, however, Chapman makes it abundantly clear that the only example of stupidity, in this case, can be found on the side of proprietary companies who failed to understand the Open Source/Free Software movement and its effect on the software industry.
To sum it up, In Search of Stupidity is a very good book, especially if you missed the first edition. Five stars are well deserved.
Book Description
Fresh out of the Israeli Army, twenty-year-old Iris Bahr decides to follow the footsteps of many before her and backpack through Asia. Only unlike the average traveler, she has more in mind than just seeing the sights: she is on a desperate mission to lose her virginity.
Dork Whore is a fresh and funny memoir about a young woman whose quirky personality and embarrassing neuroses always seem to get in the way of her getting what she wants. As Iris lands in hotel rooms in Bangkok, rides scooters out of opium-fogged compounds hidden in the jungle, and antagonizes an impromptu tour group in Vietnam, she begins to realize that the greatest obstacle she’ll have to overcome isn’t losing her virginity, but coming to terms with the reasons for her need to be accepted. Poignant, hilarious, and always original, Dork Whore is a remarkable mix of bawdy humor and heartbreaking moments, witty intelligence and touching personal discoveries. Iris Bahr has given us an unforgettable coming-of-age tale about how a young woman finally learns how to trust others—and her own judgment.
Customer Reviews:
Funny and real.......2007-10-01
I really loved this book. Iris Bahr is pretty multi-talented, and I heard her in character on Studio 360, and later saw her on Current. This is so hilariouly honest, it's cringe-worthy, but I have a feeling that this is very realistic. I enjoyed the diversion, and even though this doesn't come to an ending you expect, it's still a great ride. Have fun explaining the title to others!
Hilarious! Every woman will relate in some way .......2007-09-14
and I'm sure every guy can find someone they are akin to as well.
I found this book to be almost impossible to put down and read it in two evenings (it's a great quick read.)
Iris Bahr tells her memoir in the most humorous way possible. Granted, she is a comedian so her wit is not surprising, but the STORIES are just amazing.
I would and will recommend this book to all of my friends.
Entertaining!.......2007-05-13
Great book- great first novel. Entertaining, smart and very funny. 2 thumbs up.
Just plain funny. And heartwarming. And gross........2007-04-20
This book is laugh-out-loud funny, from the title to the last word. I never knew a book could make me cringe so much with embarassment! She compassionately writes about it feels to be 21 - bold, insecure, lost, boundless, immortal, giddy, and aching. I read it so fast and wanted it to keep going! I am waiting for the sequel! :)
worms, weed, wankers and a woman.......2007-04-18
Dork Whore is an 3ffin' hilarious read as a 20 year old Israeli girl traipses across Asia hoping to get some lovin', all the while questioning nearly every move and non-move she makes (or should have made or wishes was made upon her). The book pulses forward (throbs?) as potential mates pop up along the trails... I actually found myself rooting for some guys while hoping others would flunk the author's comically shifting 'standards'. Make no mistake, this book is funny...Bahr has fantastic timing, effortlessly patters with prose and has a knack for scat...but the most unique quality of DW is the honesty and generosity of Bahr as a story teller. She opens up her head, heart, and family past with uncommon candor and lets us see all things big and small that make trying to get some human connection (and a little action) in this world so difficult. And worthy.
Oh, and her lubricious descriptions of Thai brothels will send anyone to 0rbitz...
Book Description
“Nobody knows better than Bruce Sterling how thin the membrane between science fiction and real life has become, a state he correctly depicts as both thrilling and terrifying in this frisky, literate, clear-eyed sketch of the next half-century. Like all of the most interesting futurists, Sterling isn’t just talking about machines and biochemistry: what he really cares about are the interstices of technology with culture and human history.” -Kurt Andersen, author of
Turn of the Century
Visionary author Bruce Sterling views the future like no other writer. In his first nonfiction book since his classic
The Hacker Crackdown, Sterling describes the world our children might be living in over the next fifty years and what to expect next in culture, geopolitics, and business.
Time calls Bruce Sterling “one of America’s best-known science fiction writers and perhaps the sharpest observer of our media-choked culture working today in any genre.”
Tomorrow
Now is, as Sterling wryly describes it, “an ambitious, sprawling effort in thundering futurist punditry, in the pulsing vein of the futurists I’ve read and admired over the years: H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Alvin Toffler; Lewis Mumford, Reyner Banham, Peter Drucker, and Michael Dertouzos. This book asks the future two questions: What does it mean? and How does it feel? ”
Taking a cue from one of William Shakespeare’s greatest soliloquies, Sterling devotes one chapter to each of the seven stages of humanity: birth, school, love, war, politics, business, and old age. As our children progress through Sterling’s Shakespearean life cycle, they will encounter new products; new weapons; new crimes; new moral conundrums, such as cloning and genetic alteration; and new political movements, which will augur the way wars of the future will be fought.
Here are some of the author’s predictions:
• Human clone babies will grow into the bitterest and surliest adolescents ever.
• Microbes will be more important than the family farm.
• Consumer items will look more and more like cuddly, squeezable pets.
• Tomorrow’s kids will learn more from randomly clicking the Internet than they ever will from their textbooks.
• Enemy governments will be nice to you and will badly want your tourist money, but global outlaws will scheme to kill you, loudly and publicly, on their Jihad TVs.
• The future of politics is blandness punctuated with insanity.
The future of activism belongs to a sophisticated, urbane global network that can make money—the Disney World version of Al Qaeda.
Tomorrow Now will change the way you think about the future and our place in it.
Customer Reviews:
Amazing!.......2006-10-29
Tomorrow Now is essentially a long and brilliant essay by Bruce Sterling, a noted science fiction writer and futurist covering some of his ideas of what the future may hold. Sterling very cleverly breaks the book into seven parts based upon a soliloquoy from Shakespeare covering the ages of man from birth to death, and wittily prophesies what life may shape itself into in our near future.
Two things struck me about this book. The first is that it is not nearly as focused on the next fifty years as the title purports. There is a fair deal of what the future may hold, but there is also a great deal of the present thrown in (especially in the soldier section), and some futurism that is more than 50 years out. Surprisingly this didn't bother me at all because his analysis of the present, especially an exposition on three different terrorists warlords, was fascinating, absolutely fascinating. This book ranges far and wide, and colors outside the lines of the 50 years stated, but I was glad it did as I read.
The second thing that struck me was that this is one of the most amazingly well-written books I've ever read. I am not sure I have ever read something as engaging, fascinating, informative and so easy to read at the same time. I have always enjoyed Sterling's fiction work but, frankly, the quality of this non-fiction book trumps his fictional stories. His writing style is very chatty, more or less as if you are sitting across the table from him, and at first this threw me. It's not something you expect in a science book. Yet once I adjusted I realized that this may be one of the clearest pieces of writing I have ever had the pleasure to read. When I say "pleasure to read" I actually mean it. That is a phrase far too over-used, but in choosing it I mean it literally: reading the words was a pleasure regardless of what he was talking about. His sentence construction and word choices were simply pleasurable to read in and of themself, and I have never seen adjectives used so well to create shades and nuances of meaning before.
Much of the speculation for the future involves biotechnology, changes in workplace dynamics, and what we actually produce, the change of market dynamics, consumerism to end-user, medical advances, and the rift between the New World Order (the first world) and the New World Disorder (the third world). If I had one reservation about this book it is that Sterling promised to show why the Islamic terrorism today will be irrelevant in the future. I don't think he ever really did that; he set the stage for it, and provided the backstory necessary to see the writing on the wall, but he never came out and posited why. I agree with him that the terrorism is not a long-term problem but it would have been nice to see him forcefully make that conclusion. That one quibble aside, this is a book that anyone who cares about current events, the future, or science will find compelling, interesting, and incredibly easy to understand and follow. This is a first class work and I highly recommend it.
Recommended reading to understand the right questions.......2006-03-22
This is entertaining, informative, funny, and grim at the same time. A bittersweet look at the future.
When you look at the reviews, just remember that republicans will hate this book because they have a belief system impervious to the reality happening outside of their heads. They alone have the power to be right and rightness is affirmed by belief! They read Fred Barnes and John Stossel for whats really going on because they're closed and finite. Ambiguity is kryptonite to republicans.
Read this book to find out more about the small print at the bottom of the social contract. There is no threat of a New World Order. There is a New World Disorder that is already here and devolving. Order is not on the horizon anywhere except in one's own chosen orthodoxy.
Brilliant Futurist Architecture Built on Weak Foundations.......2004-02-03
Bruce Sterling is, without doubt, a brilliant futurist. In "Tomorrow Now", he serves up a feast of clever and entertaining prognostications about humanity's near future. But reader beware! The book is like a gleaming, new building whose stunning design, lavish decoration and gleaming contours can blind observers to many small architectural flaws and the crucial fact that it's built on shaky foundations.
To take one example, Sterling tells us in one paragraph that a "cruise missile ... is just a rich guy's truck bomb". But in the very next paragraph he emphasizes that there are in fact huge differences between cruise missiles and truck bombs that go far beyond the class background of their users. Cruise missiles are produced and deployed by complex, industrially advanced societies, while truck bombs are used by terrorists who operate beyond the ken of settled governments and civilized society.
Another, more serious example of some of the less-than-deep thinking that went into this book is its overall organizational gimmick, which is based on the "Seven Ages of Man" so poetically described by Shakespeare and Marlowe. Sterling emhasizes the chronological aspect of these "Ages" by labelling his chapters as stages. Stage 1 is the Infant, Stage 2 is the Student, and so on. He uses these stages as conceptual launching pads for fascinating riffs on a variety of subjects related to 21st century technology, culture and politics. In the chapter on the Infant, for instance, he writes at length about future bioengineering not just for babies but also adults and what this will mean for huminaty as a whole. In "Stage 4: The Soldier" he speculates on the nature of future warfare. Thus, Sterling is really often talking about cross-cutting themes rather that chronological ages, which is more than a little confusing. Why he did this, except that it is so cool to quote from Shakespeare, escapes me.
A final example of Sterling's inconsistency is the subtitle of the book itself: "Envisioning the Next 50 Years". In fact, he often describes trends from the late 21st century, which puts us more than 50 years ahead. So why didn't he just call the book "Envisioning the 21st Century"? Search me.
This is a great book, but Sterling's slickness can't completely compensate for these weaknesses. Cool soundbytes, technological virtuosity, cute wordplay and even large dollops of honest-to-God weighty insight are not enough to make up for some rather shoddy underlying illogic and conceptual weaknesses.
Not very good..........2004-01-12
Not very good... tries to examine the social and institutional trends, but goes into much self-serving prose.
Tomorrow Never Knows.......2003-10-27
Paradigm-shifts can stick in our collective craw like jawbreakers in a goose-neck. Galileo's carpet-pull on Ptolemy was no amateur-hour prank, and Darwin trumping Yahweh left a cantelope-sized goiter that still makes religious fundies bark and fume. Earth-shaking, yes, but taking decades, sometimes centuries to evolve their total, terraforming, reality-torquing impact -- slow-flying dreadnaughts of cultural metamorphosis whose meaning and trajectory still won't let us sleep at night.
Sterling's question is: What happens when the winds of change start storming the reality-studio at supersonic speeds? When whiplash upgrades seem to convulse the Zeitgeist every other minute? When dimensions start spinning like nerve-cells in a centrifuge, when ontology itself becomes as fluid as the global market? Leaning into the stormwinds of these queries, *Tomorrow Now* is less a bland Tofflerian forecast than a smoking flak-helmet pocked with the dents, scars, and impact-profiles of paradigm-shifts concussing like hot shrapnel.
"Apocalypse is boring," as Sterling likes to say, the last-ditch noctuary of the evangelical, the helpless, the neo-Luddite, the future-shocked. Better to encounter futurity with all the Olympian resources of the secular visionary imagination, with conceptual thaumaturgy and high comedy, with new languages to be learned and created, new disciplines picked up and dropped on the fly, a new world racing a hairsbreadth ahead of social and environmental holocausts that have always accompanied technological innovation....
But hey, enough of my hero-worshipping agit-prop, here are some snapshots from Sterling's globalist Bazaar of the Bizarre:
BIOTECH: Let's learn a lesson from our ancestor and brethren, the prokaryote -- let's pay homage to the two pounds of living bacteria that all humans carry within. In the microbe-literate society of the future, the elasticity and survival-skills of the bacterial swarm will make human cloning look like "a simpleminded stunt"(27) by comparison. Genetic engineering will heal the sick, fortify new deadly viruses, darken and transfigure every certainty, pump ontological coolants into the icy elysium of the posthuman. When evolution is reverse-engineered, becoming another stock-option in the industrial market sweep, Homo Prometheus will tap into genetic realms of unprecedented freedom, complexity, beauty, disfigurement, and terror.
EDUCATION: Whisked and pummeled by constant change, traditions will corrode, protocols will deliquesce, and canons will bloom with rot like beached whales. Fields of learning and praxis will ooze squishily from discipline to discipline, producing a steady stream of dynamic hybrids to stay on top of the market. Cultural memory will become like Leonard in *Memento* trying to reassemble and deploy his rapidly obsolescing past, swimming inside of whirlpool of innovation, competition, ecological catastrophe, and an elephant's graveyard of accumulating dead tech.
DESIGN: When things start to think, when domestic objects "love" you, when Shopping starts to look like Art and Philosophy, "visionary materialism" becomes a tasteless euphemism for a phase of cybernetic immersion that would have given McLuhan the spins. We will all be owned by our machines the way tribal peoples feel "owned" by the horizon, by the regenerative landscape of moon and tide, river and mountain, animal and insect. (In case you mistake my tone, this is not a "good" thing. It is simply inevitable.) We will all be passionate, obsessed fetishists. Think of the current ubiquity of cell-phones and telecom gear, and multiply it a thousandfold, in every direction. Trying to write "predictive" science-fiction in this maelstrom of voices and priorities will be like trying to set up a house of cards inside a wind-tunnel.
WAR: Cocksure superpowers trying to net a swarm of locusts in Fourth World zones run by pirates, drug-runners, mercs, ethnic-genociders, and cold-eyed Arab theology students jumping from wreckage to wreckage in the transnational narco-arms bazaar. Just think Belgrade, Kabul, Chechnya, Baghdad, and Mogadishu on crack. And the Third World zones of controlled anarchy embedded in every First World technocracy.
LAW, BUSINESS, POLITICS: Will there be much for governments to do in a post-ideological world, where public policy simpers beneath the windfalls of corporate underwriting, where human rights become a browser plug-in, where success and happiness is sold in terraced upgrades to graduated bidders? Will lawyers and legislators and police superstructures be installed as ornamental horticulture, migrant tenants surfing the crest of technology's raw, surging power? Will a democratic electorate retain its passion for activism and involvement, or will we vote with our money, our investments, our channel flipping, our site surfing, our zodiac of recorded purchases and credit histories?
DEATH: Sure, the Atomic Age may have decked us out in a cozy, suburban Cold War where mutually assured destruction and commie witchhunts could guarantee rigid cultural identity, war-fever eschatology, and a sober sense of imperialist mission (in short, the technocratic inheritor of Judaeo-Christian End Times), but where's the corporate payoff in that? Why not treat human mortality as another marketing-scenario to be spun, merchandized, glossed and sold? But if Sterling is right, our species may, in the end, "outsmart itself to death, [if] human knowledge is...not compatible with human survival"(264). We've burrowed too deep and too greedily into the planet to give birth and sustenance to our machines. Every species lost in the quest to infect the ecosystem with our ubiquity is a piece of the planetary survival-plan that's been irretrievably eroded by our narcissism, our fear, our all-too-human frenzy for mastery and technique, our Faustian gamble with machine-interface....
All in all, Mr. Sterling puts the Zeit in Geist, and *Tomorrow Now* has enough Plutarchan zing, erudition, and vervy wisdom to keep you buzzing for weeks. Some awesome riffs here. Kept me on tenterhooks throughout. Highest recommendation.
--for Ian Vance
Book Description
Learning To Be Me tells the true story of a woman's twenty-three-year battle with, and ultimate recovery from, an extreme form of bulimia—the most misunderstood and invisible of the eating disorders. With an honest conversational style, Author Jocelyn Golden recounts the uncomfortable realities of suffering from an eating disorder since the age of thirteen, when she first vomited her breakfast into a bush on the way to school. Through personal experience, Golden shares the journey of violent self-abuse and the many humiliations she faced as her cries for help went unheard or were misunderstood. Eventually, Golden was completely reliant on and immersed in the disease, and she later underwent two life-altering surgeries. After living with bulimia for years, Golden tells the inspirational tale of how she found the strength, motivation, and support to seek the help that finally brought her into recovery. Today in the United States the eating disorder epidemic remains largely a silent and hidden crisis. Whether you are a sufferer, friend, family member, or spouse, Learning To Be Me will teach you to either give yourself or a loved one the gift of self-love as you continue on the journey to recovery.
Customer Reviews:
THE BOOK I HAD BEEN LOOKING FOR.......2007-10-03
I had been looking for a book that would help me understand the thought process behind a bulimic's behavior, in an effort to help a family member. I wanted to get inside the head of a bulimic, I wanted to FEEL what a bulimic does, no other book did this for me - Jocelyn Golden's "Learning to be me" did! I've read many bulimia books in my quest to educate myself, but none gave me the insight I gained by reading Ms. Golden's book. I highly recommend "Learning To Be Me" to any sister, mother or other relative trying to help a loved one. It gave me the courage to confront my relative, one more time, and present her with support and treatment options even though I know it may sever our relationship - I love her that much. I thank Ms. Golden for the difference her talented writing has made in my life and for portraying the facts clearly and with emotion.
I would love to see another book by this author.
Strictly a memoir.......2007-09-23
I read this memoir and realized very quickly, that Memoir was an accurate category for this book. It certainly does not belong in self help/recovery.
Jocelyn's narrative keeps repeating descriptions of her terrible life in a way that makes this tragic disease seem petty. I have endured this dis-ease for 23 plus years and I found Aimee Lu's book "Life after an Eating Disorder" so full of hope and rcovery and revelation about this disease.
I found this book to be full of triggers and narcissistic thoughts. It is a "Go Ask Alice" for eating disorders.
""Sensing the Self" is also fantastic, but a little more clinical. If you are looking for recovery, read about recovery. If you are looking for a description of how tragic and destructive and miserable an addiction can be, read a memoir.
Learning to be me.......2007-05-31
Great motivational reading for anyone suffering from an eating disorder. The author Jocelyn Golden has a great website and even took the time to respond to my email question! The book inspired me to seek treatment at an inpatient facility after 22 years of bulimia. I encourage others suffering from this disease to read the book and seek counseling and treatment. I am inspired and am encouraged and have hope that I can face the bulimic beast inside!
A long road to liberation.......2007-05-23
I thought this book was incredibly well written with such deep emotion and so profound it has affected my perception on the road to recovery.
I now see hope and it is possible with the right tools and support.
So proud of the journey taken by Jocelyn.
Buy this book and it'll change your life.
A dramatic read.......2007-04-26
Can't disagree more with the previous reviewer - this is a superbly written book with lots of practical information. I have read many ED books and this is one of the best. I highly recommend it. This book has such an authentic voice that you can't help being moved and inspired by the author.
Book Description
For Ethan Mordden, the closing night of the hit musical, 42nd St. sounded the death knell of the art form of the Broadway musical. After that, big orchestras, real voices, recognizable books and intelligent lyrics went out the window in favor of cats, helicopters, yodeling Frenchmen, and the roof of the Paris Opera. Mordden takes us through the aftermath of the days of the great Broadway musical. From the long-running Cats to Miss Saigon, Phantom, and Les Miserables, to gems like The Producers, he is unsparing in his look at the remains of the day. Not content to scold the shows' creators, Mordden takes on the critics, too, splaying their bodies across the Great White Way like Sweeney Todd giving a close shave. Once more, it's "curtain going up," but Mordden is not applauding.
Customer Reviews:
The truth hurts.......2007-05-20
I recommend this almost as highly as the others in this series. There's nobody better at giving an overview of the Broadway Musical; his musical literacy alone is probably unique among writers on the subject.
That said, you should read one of the earlier books first, because he's naturally using earlier decades as referents. This book is also a little darker than its predecessors, but don't blame the messenger for the bad news. He finds some good in almost every season, and never actually indulges in the despair that the titls promises.
Yes, there are a few jokes that fall flat. Yes, his 'political' opinions are ignorant and cold-hearted -- the exact opposite of his theatre criticism -- but they total perhaps a page or two out of three hundred, and don't seem to influence his theatrical judgement. For example: you may not agree with his take on 'Ragtime', but he doesn't use his deep dislike of one aspect of the story to dismiss the overall production. (Actually, he does do that to 'Zorba', but that's in his book on the 60s.)
Trying too hard.......2005-11-30
Granted, I haven't read Ethan Mordden's series of books on musical theatre...and they have been well-reviewed on this site. I chose this book primarily because I wanted a book that examines the last 25 years of Broadway musicals and is fairly recent. This book surveys the period from 1978 - 2003 on Broadway (and off).
Although I did agree with many of Mr. Mordden's views on various musical projects throughout the last 25 years, I have several misgivings about recommending this book.
1). Mr. Mordden tries too hard to be witty and many of his jokes (witticisms) push too hard to be funny. Some are downright tasteless...example: when he refers to a musical based on "Our Town" that, due to Mary Martin's fatal cancer the project was "killed".
2). Mr. Mordden regularly insults his readers and Broadway audiences, regaling them for their "stupidity" while making numerous factual mistakes of his own in research. He refers to only "four original songs" from the movie Footloose that transferred to the stage version. Wrong! A couple of times, he also assigns roles to the wrong actor in his synopsis of the shows.
3). Mr. Mordden, in attempting to be witty and funny, is quite often just downright mean and bitchy.
4). His pretentiousness is on full display in the use of numerous references to Broadway as "The Street". I've never heard it called this...is this his own invention to try to coin a term and be hip and trendy? Several times, he also get tied up in the syntax of his sentence structure and the overuse of his thesaurus in order to impress. Thus, his meaning becomes muddled and difficult to understand.
5). Mr. Mordden decides that, in writing this book, he has good reason to throw in right-wing political propoganda here and there. I'm not sure why, but he does it regularly which weakens his arguments as he analyzes the shows. He rips "Ragtime" for glorifying terrorism...not only is this analysis ridiculous, but totally out of context for a musical set in the early 20th century.
Although Mr. Mordden is quite astute and dead on in many instances...his insistence on writing in the manner and style he does makes reading the book a disappointing experience in the long run.
A fine writer shoots himself in the foot.......2005-10-02
As other reviewers have noted, Mordden's decade-by-decade series on the Broadway musical has been superb to this point. His wit and genuine love of the form, together with an encyclopedic knowledge of social and cultural history, made his earlier books treasures -- "Coming Up Roses" was the best of a choice lot.
What a disappointment that "Happiest Corpse" turned out so bitter and screed-filled. Specious politics aside, by indulging himself in extended rants against Burt Lancaster, the movie version of "The Producers", "Ragtime", stupid audiences, and so on ad nauseam, Mordden clouds the fact that he's really not reporting on a corpse at all. It's easy to miss among the political outbursts, but Mordden finds many recent shows to praise and wonderful scores to extol. Yet the reader can hardly appreciate the good news when the overall tone of the book is so nasty. It's sad, not to mention ironic, that Mordden has become as humorless and bombastic as the Left he so thoroughly despises.
Two final comments: (1) Mordden's reference to "Patty Lu" is not a mistake but a joke from a previous Mordden footnote, in which he pretends that Robert and Patty's family name is Lu, and Jubilation T.'s last name is Corn. It's a lame joke but Mordden seems more prone to these lately. (2) Mordden can't have seen "Bat Boy" or "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" to dismiss them so snottily. Both were terrific musicals in the classic form, even if their subject matter was outre. Mordden falls all over himself praising "Urinetown" (no Barbara Cook there either, by the way), a good show but not the equal of either "Bat Boy" or "Hedwig".
More irritating than entertaining.......2005-03-06
While I find Ethan Mordden often erudite and highly entertaining,I find his comments often irritating and inaccurate. His new book, THE HAPPIEST CORPSE I'VE EVER SEEN contains inaccurate information on productions which involved both of us, from placing the New Amsterdam Theatre Company's final presentation, Jerome Kern's SALLY, before producer Bill Tynes' death to a cryptic "all was well till someone claimed to have found the Bennett parts at the St Louis Muny" about my restoration of Cole Porter's lost show JUBILEE. If Mr Mordden can't keep the information accurate on matters in which I was involved, I question the accuracy of other areas in his expertise.
To my knowledge, Ethan and Bill Tynes were good friends and it's my memory that Ethan was on the board for The New Amsterdam Theatre Company. Bill's health in 1986 delegated the March production of JUBILEE to Sally Hassenfelt, who became the New Amsterdam Theatre Company's producer at Bill's death in January 1987. SALLY was the only show produced under her regime in January 1988; the late Bill Tynes was still credited as producer.
Bill had wanted to use the March 1986 performances of JUBILEE as a backer's audition to present a major revival, but his health limited his time as producer and Ms Hassenfelt, who had been brought in to assist Bill, asserted her power over casting and director by bullying everyone, from me to the Cole Porter Trust. One "period musicals" authority tried to sabotage my working on JUBILEE by attempting to locate the original scores and parts, but nothing was located. In his latest book, SING FOR YOUR SUPPER, Mr Mordden's comments on JUBILEE, removing Tommy Krasker and me from any reconstruction or revival comments, show that he's been studying the photocopy of my vocal score that I gave him in 1986.
One of the most frustrating reads in quite some time.......2005-02-10
I reviewed this book for Talkin' Broadway [...] I have never been so frustrated reading a book as I was reading this one. While there is no doubt that Mordden is a knowledgeable aficionado of Musical Theater, he also comes across as bigoted, hypocritical and even homophobic (and considering that he is a gay man himself, this is more than a little appalling).
When he sticks to simply writing about the shows, he can be clear and incisive. At those moments he ranks with the best writers of theatrical criticism. Then on a dime he will sideswipe the reader with an absurd blanket statement, such as dismissing "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and "Bat Boy" due to the fact that "...the farther we get from shows with a valid role for Barbara Cook, the farther we get from what is enjoyable" yet extolling Michael John LaChiusa's "Hello Again" and "Marie Christine" or William Finn's "Falsettos," neither of which contain roles truly suitable for Cook. Comments like "...those who truly love the musical - basically gay men and Frank Rich..." and "The Full Monty tells of married couples and teaches homo tolerance" go beyond eye-rolling into purely offensive. And the inclusion of "The Tap Dance Kid" into a chapter entitled "Why Can't Susan Smith and Timothy McVeigh Have a Musical? Hitler Has One" that explores shows like "Capeman" and "Assassins" is even worse (and including "Movin' Out," constantly called "Movin' On," and "The Full Monty" into a chapter on musicals on the disenfranchised, since he believes that the white working-class male is a minority due to actions by "... special interest groups, lone-ranger spoilers and the ACLU [that] make war on everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to Christmas..." is just plain head-scratchingly wrong.
Most disturbing of all, however, is a frothing rant against "Ragtime" that ends the chapter. While it is perplexing that Mordden can consider "Ragtime" an exultation of terrorism due to Coalhouse's targeting of firehouses but can equate the `losers' in Assassins with "Islamists killing the symbol of the success they can not have," his statement that "Ragtime" "reveals how slavishly Broadway buys snake oil from the wreckers and stooges of the hard left" belongs more in a treatise by Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly than in a critical essay on an art form.
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