Book Description
ESPN: Creating an Empire tells the full story of ESPN's origins, of make-or-break decisions that were made on a seemingly daily basis, and involved a cast of characters including Howard Cosell, Ted Turner, Roone Arledge, Don King, and Peter Ueberroth.
Customer Reviews:
A complete and utter waste of time.......2007-08-20
Silly me. In looking for the definitive history of ESPN, I somehow stumbed on this this effort: nothing more than a self-written vanity project by a long-retired executive with no journalism background and waaay too much time on his hands. Readers must endure droning tales of Stuart Evey's days as glorified gofer to a son of eccentric billionaire J. Paul Getty; pointless tales that have nothing to do with the founding of a network. Other reviewers summmed it up nicely, that Evey was nothing more than a well-placed conduit for funds from Getty Oil to ESPN's true creative founders... he provided nothing more and in this excreble effort mightly attempts to snatch much of the credit. Sorry, pal, you were there as an early observer, little more. (Oh, you hired Jim Simpson? Wow.) ESPN has risen to become an important player in the twenty years SINCE your departure. The whole effort is pathetic, really.
Free with Price of Admission.......2007-03-24
This self-glorifying piece of garbage seems like the kind of book that comes free when you pay to see the author speak about modern business. Problem is, with most of these types of books as a matter of fact, the people writing them have been out of business for several years and it shows.
I received this book for Christmas because my brother thought it was actually about ESPN. The other reviewers nailed it when they said ESPN is only used to sell the book. The early days of ESPN, the operation, were dry and lifeless in this presentation.
Sports Talk Big-Time........2007-02-25
Scott Connal from Yonkers, New York and educated at Roosevelt High School, left NBC to be the pied piper of ESPN, after twenty-two years in broadcasting. His expertise and leadership aided in development of a network to change the future of sports television. It was said that "ESPN was the single most important factor for the popularity of college basketball." Connal moved up from NBC Sports to make the new network professional. He'd been made to look foolish in the 'Heidi' affair which superseded the Raiders 43-32 comeback win on the air. At the organization of ESPN, his active support and ongoing encouragement made pros out of young, ambitious media minds.
Stuart Evey, a 26-yr-veteran of Getty Oil Company, directed the development and launch of ESPN. He served as chairman and, in 1985, negotiated its sale to ABC-TV. "As I gained experience in the television industry, I endured another wild business chase, this time in the area of pay-for-view movies." It started as a collaboration between ESPN President Chet Simmons and his friend Al Ruch who had left NBC to take a job in acquisitions for MCA/Universal Pictures. The Getty Oil building just up the street from the Ambassador Hotel, where Robert Kennedy was hot and killed. Evey called this "the tragedy that ruined a nation's optimism." And it's never been the same.
Ignorance is sometimes bliss. The first president of ESPN was Chet Simmons. He discovered that every sport has its own dance and one should learn "how to relax in action." He had an office on the 18th floor, but did much of his business over drinks at the Wilshire Country Club with Glenn Davis, a Heisman Trophy winner at Army football, and Felix Blanchard, a distanct cousin of Lowell and Happy's. You could see over the skyline of Los Angeles on to the San Gabriel Mountains in Pasadena.
Timing was everything. Ice skating is an art to emotional and intricate. The costumes are as important as the performances. Sports stars like Peyton Manning are turned into heroes by their fans. He was on the cover of "Sports Illustrated" as the one player who "takes the Colts to the Super Bowl" where they played better than the Chicago Bears. Who would have believed it! He gets more attention and adoration anywhere else than his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee (here, he's known as not ever leaving a tip.), although they did release his Webb School video of doing a tango to the media. His goal now is to become a movie star -- high hopes. Most football players who get attention are exhibitionists like the New Orleans' Saints Reggie Bush who does a somersault "touchdown" flip -- to show off. What has happened to the dignity of the game?
It is said that these "clowns" get caught up in the emotion of the game, and it's part of the drama of the play. Coaches make the game of sport a psychological, as well as physical, demonstration. Those who enjoy these highjinks (and get a kick out of seeing someone make a fool of himself), they are letting off a little steam after they make a great play. Did Joe Namath throw the ball into the ground? Would cerebral Joe Dimaggia put on a show -- well, he did marry Marily Monroe. ESPN's "Mike and Mike in the morning" show encourages such actions. Most sports announcers are carried away with the game themselves. Now, baseball I can take: Mickey Mantle was my star and even had a song about him, "I Love Mickey" by Teresa Brewer.
J. Paul Getty had an interest in sports. George Getty, a good-looking fellow, loved horse racing and posed with Willie Shoemaker at Santa Anita. Even golf, as boring to watch as can be, got their attention. A photo of Jack Nicklaus signing a contract with ESPN took centerfold. There's also a phto of the large tall Getty Building and Universal Studios out in L. A.
Martin Haulot of the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team, now coached by a former member, Denis Savard (one of five Blackhawks to have his number retired -- he scored 377 goals in 13 seasons), aggressive "someone" shown in Sports Illustrated to bring them national attention. The Knox Ice Bears are amazing, a joy to watch.
Great insight about what really happened!.......2004-11-30
Mr. Evey did a wonderful job on this book! He prefaced the beginning of the book with his work at Getty Oil and described his important role with the company and how it lead to the start of ESPN. If it were not for Stu Evey, this deal possibly would not have transpired! I believe all sports enthusiasts will find this book of great value as it details an important part of history with the rise and success of ESPN. Wonderfull job Mr. Evey!
ESPN..a "wildcat" story.......2004-10-19
The ESPN company was created in the tradition of Texas oil "wildcat" entrepreneurship. Mr. Evey, the Getty Oil executive who authors the story, ESPN Creating An Empire, describes his role as starting quarterback, coach and general manager of this far fetched idea and fledgling television endeavor. How ESPN gets "off the ground" and into outer space is one of the great dramas in the growth of American media and entertainment history. The story is told well in the first person, but credit is apportioned generously to the shakers and makers of what has become the household icon of sports entertainment. Ambitious and visionary entrepreneurs would do well to study the management of risks and opportunities described in Mr. Evey's book.
Book Description
How did the creation of the "Other" woman in English narratives contribute to the displacement of sexuality onto the exotic or savage woman? How did this cultural invention reinforce the cult of domesticity at home? What were the social and economic forces driving the process? Among the first books to consider issues of empire in relation to literary texts of the eighteenth century, Torrid Zones offers a compelling revision of the history of feminism in a postcolonial context.
Felicity Nussbaum argues that the need to control women's sexuality in eighteenth-century England intensified as the demands of trade and colonization required an ever-larger, able-bodied population. Describing how women's reproductive labor was harnessed to that task, Nussbaum explores issues such as the production of life, of goods, and of desire. She also considers a variety of cultural practices (usually construed as exotic) in England and the empire, including polygamy, infanticide, prostitution, homoeroticism, and arranged marriages.
Torrid Zones includes new readings of significant texts by and about female subjects, including novels by Defoe, Richardson, Johnson, Cleland, Lennox, Sarah Scott, Frances Sheridan, and Phebe Gibbes. It also considers the more broadly defined texts of culture such as travel narratives, medical documents, legal records, and engravings.
"I take as a central metaphor for the consideration of maternity and sexuality the concept of torrid zones, both the geographical torrid zones of the territory between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, and the torrid zone mapped onto the human body, especially the female body. A premise of my study is that the contrasts among the torrid, temperate, and frigid zones of the globe are formative in imagining that a sexualized woman of empire is distinct from domestic English womanhood. The general category of 'woman' muddles the binaries between mother and whore, self and Other, center and periphery." -- from the Introduction
Book Description
Completed in 1747, Mark Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands was the first major illustrated publication on the flora and fauna of Britain's American colonies. Together with his Hortus Britanno-Americanus (1763), which detailed plant species that might be transplanted successfully to British soil, Catesby's Natural History exerted an important, though often overlooked, influence on the development of art, natural history, and scientific observation in the eighteenth century.
Inspired by a major traveling exhibition of Catesby's watercolor drawings from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, this collection of interdisciplinary essays considers Catesby's endeavors as a naturalist-artist, scientific explorer, experimental horticulturist, ornamental gardener, and early environmental thinker in terms of the interests held by the various, overlapping communities in which he functioned—particularly as those interests related to the British colonial enterprise.
The contributors are David R. Brigham, Joyce E. Chaplin, Mark Laird, Amy R. W. Meyers, Therese O'Malley, and Margaret Beck Pritchard.
The contributors:
David R. Brigham (Worcester Art Museum)
Joyce E. Chaplin (Vanderbilt University)
Mark Laird (University of Toronto)
Amy R. W. Meyers (Huntington Library & Art Collections)
Therese O'Malley (National Gallery of Art)
Margaret Beck Pritchard (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)
Book Description
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Austrian Empire ranked third among the world's oil-producing states (surpassed only by the United States and Russia), and accounted for five percent of global oil production. By 1918, the Central Powers did not have enough oil to maintain a modern military. How and why did the promise of oil fail Galicia (the province producing the oil) and the Empire?
In a brilliantly conceived work, Alison Frank traces the interaction of technology, nationalist rhetoric, social tensions, provincial politics, and entrepreneurial vision in shaping the Galician oil industry. She portrays this often overlooked oil boom's transformation of the environment, and its reorientation of religious and social divisions that had defined a previously agrarian population, as surprising alliances among traditional foes sprang up among workers and entrepreneurs, at the workplace, and in the pubs and brothels of new oiltowns.
Frank sets this complex story in a context of international finance, technological exchange, and Habsburg history as a sobering counterpoint to traditional modernization narratives. As the oil ran out, the economy, the population, and the environment returned largely to their former state, reminding us that there is nothing ineluctable about the consequences of industrial development.
Customer Reviews:
Must read for historians and activists alike.......2006-09-12
This book is a rare historical work which combines readability and depth of insight. While I have read others that also achieve this mark, OIL EMPIRE is one of the few that does so and still maintains the specificity of an academic work. At times I found the author violated Orwell's dictum to use the simplest vocabulary to convey an idea, but this did not distract from the pleasure of reading this book. I tend to focus more on classical histories, and new nothing about the history of Galicia before I started, but I found the the author was able to situate her research so that this was not a problem. When I finished the book I was reminded of the old saying that to understand a large problem we must first understand a small problem. After the events of 9/11 it is no longer just the leftists who assert that control of the oil economy is at the heart of our foreign policy. This book provides a case study of how the same ambitions that we have today were played out on a smaller scale at the turn of the last century. I look forward to seeing what the author has in store for her next work.
Average customer rating:
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An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj
Thomas R. Metcalf
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Stones of Empire: The Buildings of the Raj
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Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
ASIN: 0195656024 |
Book Description
An Imperial Vision examines the relationship between culture and power expressed in the architectural forms the British employed in India. From the great monuments of New Delhi to the most obsure structures in dusty country towns, these buildings visibly represented in stone the choices
the British made in politics as imperial rulers. Viewed together they enhanced the hold of the empire over the ruler and the ruled alike.
Customer Reviews:
THE RAJ.......2006-11-12
The British really did empire well, they cultivated the trust of their subjects and backed it up with percision military might. The British were fascinated with India and it shows it the imperial architecture, the fusion of Western and Indian Architecture, most of which is spectacular, expecially in New Delhi. This book has wonderful images and well researched text on the architecture of India during the Raj. The British left India with a thirst for democracy and the buildings in which to excercise their freedom. Highly recommended to anyone with any interest in this subject...and buy Imperial Delhi while your at it..that is the definitive book on the subject.
Book Description
Robert W. Rydell contends that America's early world's fairs actually served to legitimate racial exploitation at home and the creation of an empire abroad. He looks in particular to the "ethnological" displays of nonwhites—set up by showmen but endorsed by prominent anthropologists—which lent scientific credibility to popular racial attitudes and helped build public support for domestic and foreign policies. Rydell's lively and thought-provoking study draws on archival records, newspaper and magazine articles, guidebooks, popular novels, and oral histories.
Customer Reviews:
World's Fairs and the Leisure Class.......2001-12-09
Robert W. Rydell's book, All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916 is far different a study than Roy Rosenzweig's, yet it offers some interesting insights into how the moneyed leisure class still indulged in luxuries of their own. Rydell writes that the impetus behind world's fairs was to boost the economy while maintaining an American authority over the displays. Just as saloons and amusement parks were necessary for America's working class, the World's Fairs were designed for the leisure class.
The world fairs of 1876-1916 betrayed a much more sinister agenda. Ideas of American progressed became related to scientific racism. The widening concern over immigration by the leisure class eventually promoted eugenicist ideas about the hierarchy of white populations.
World's fairs did not stand in direct opposition to the leisure pastimes of the working class. In fact, they utilized them to "scientifically" and racially segregate members of the American population.
Rydell argues that the world's fairs in America from 1876-1916 were a material vision of political, business, and intellectuals to promote their vision of racial dominance. Thus, so far we have witnessed segregation of leisure along class lines but not until reading , All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916 is it so clear that the elements of leisure rested on racial superiority.
Great historical study.......1999-05-19
This book is an extensive study of American World's Fairs from 1876 to 1915, a pivotal period in this country's history. The author gives a lot of historical background about that era, plus a lot of well-researched information about the expositions of that period. He does a great job of showing how these expositions were designed to lure the public into supporting the interests of the power structure of the time. In addition to the text, there are a lot of photographs, some quite rare, to give the reader a feel for these expositions.
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