Archive for December, 2010

Learn to Earn: A Beginner’s Guide to the Basics of Investing and Business

Learn to Earn: A Beginner’s Guide to the Basics of Investing and Business Mutual-fund superstar Peter Lynch and author John Rothchild explain the basic principles of investing and business in a primer that will enlighten and entertain anyone who is high-school age or older.

Many investors, including some with substantial portfolios, have only the sketchiest idea of how the stock market works. The reason, say Lynch and Rothchild, is that the basics of investing — the fundamentals of our economic system and what they have to do with the stock market — aren’t taught in school. At a time when individuals have to make important decisions about saving for college and 401(k) retirement funds, this failure to provide a basic education in investing can have tragic consequences.

For those who know what to look for, investment opportunities are everywhere. The average high-school student is familiar with Nike, Reebok, McDonald’s, the Gap, and the Body Shop. Nearly every teenager in America drinks Coke or Pepsi, but only a very few own shares in either company or even understand how to buy them. Every student studies American history, but few realize that our country was settled by European colonists financed by public companies in England and Holland — and the basic principles behind public companies haven’t changed in more than 300 years.

In Learn to Earn, Lynch and Rothchild explain in a style accessible to anyone who is high-school age or older how to read a stock table in the daily newspaper, how to understand a company annual report, and why everyone should pay attention to the stock market. They explain not only how to invest, but also how to think like an investor.
Customer Review: Better-off Reading “One Up on Wall St”
Those wishing to read more about Peter Lynch’s investment philosophy are better-off reading one of his two other books, particularly “One up on Wall Street,” which is his best book. In this third and most recent book, Peter Lynch laments the failure of our high schools to educate America’s children on investing for their financial future. No more job security. No more company pension plans. Good-bye social security. How can we teach “home economics” in school, but not the basic investment skills needed to succeed financially? The stakes could never be higher.

Cash-Rich Retirement: Use the Investing Techniques of the Mega-Wealthy to Secure Your Retirement Future

Cash-Rich Retirement: Use the Investing Techniques of the Mega-Wealthy to Secure Your Retirement Future

Invest your money like a millionaire and get sound and secure returns.

Cash-Rich Retirement, as seen on the public television series Retirement Revolution, brings the investing strategies of the mega-rich to everyday people. It breaks with conventional advice that tells the public to invest mightily in stocks, flip holdings, and seek capital gains. Hogwash! says private banker and investment advisor Jim Schlagheck. Forget speculative “gains”! Invest instead for prudent income. Save. Build a “life-cycle” annuity package for lifetime retirement income. Focus on dividend-, interest-, and rent-producing investments and insurance.

Cash-Rich Retirement is provocative and practical. Schlagheck makes private-banking investment strategies available to any investor. His income and annuity strategies are unique. He also puts retirement within reach of today’s average American with six straight-shooting, show-me-the-money steps:
- Change your “automatic pilot.”
- Diversify your holdings in radically different ways.
- Build out your investment plan with funds and objective research.
- Get all the professional help you can.
- Build income streams with a ladder of annuities.
- Invest in long-term health care insurance.











Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography

Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography The Definitive Book on Photography Today;Featuring 121 Artists from Over 30 CountriesThe life of an artistic medium lies in the capricious nature of thecontemporary art market.Even the heavy-hitters – painting, sculpture anddrawing – have fallen victim to this ebb and flow; declared dead onemoment, only to be resurrected the next. Now it is photography’s turn tocontemplate its fate atop this precarious fence.Does it fall backward andplay into the taunts that call photography an “obsolete” medium, sostretched and manipulated by its collaborations with other practices thatit is rendered indefinable?Or, inspired by globalization, does it jumpforward into distinction, with practitioners resuscitating the traditionalform of the documentary image?VITAMIN Ph: NEW PERSPECTIVES IN PHOTOGRAPHY, with an introduction by TJDemos, is the definitive book on photography in the contemporary art worldtoday.VITAMIN Ph is a global survey of new developments in the medium ofphotography, featuring 121 living artists who have made a contribution tothe international art photography scene in the last five years. VITAMIN Ph presents a stunning collection of 500 images, the magnitude anddiversity of which illustrates the integral developments in photography -the dispersal of the medium on the one hand and the reinvention ofdocumentary representation on the other – that have recalibrated the mediumin the age of globalization. The artists were nominated by 78 of theworld’s top critics, curators and fellow artists such as: Vince Aletti,Christine Macel, Martin Parr, Sandra Philips, Mark Godfrey, Tod Papageorge,Tim Griffin, Jack Persekian, Richard Flood, Donna De Salvo, Katy Seigel,Richard Prince and Sarah Lewis. VITAMIN Ph features an introduction by TJ Demos, Lecturer in Art History atUniversity College London, member of Art Journal’s editorial board andcontributor to ArtForum.Demos offers a critical account of photography asa medium driven by two things – the reinvention of documentary practice andphotography’s fragmentation as a medium – and inspired by the historicalcircumstances of our current era.He explores the impact of technologicaladvances, geographic mobility, and the decline in national sovereignty onphotography today.Demos theorizes that photography, through its growingdiversity, illustrates the many ways that we are different, helps us tounderstand those differences, and connects us to a global world.The 121 artists selected represent over 30 countries including, Morocco,Russia, South Africa, Israel, South Korea, Greece, Mexico, Palestine, andthe United States. There is an ocean of talent: established artists, recentcrossovers to the medium, and artists who are just making their mark on theart scene.Some highlights from the book include:*The work of established artists Tacita Dean and Anri Sala and themore emerging, Miriam B+ckstr+m and Markus Schinwald, display theinfluence of a trained camera-eye.These artists have made a foray intophotography that is built upon the elements of video: storytelling,framing, and the importance of place and time. Schinwald, who’s artisticstudies began in fashion design, explores strategies of theatrical gesturewith a polished cinematic style *The performance artist, Tim Lee, uses the medium to stage complexrelationships between iconic artworks, canonical moments of popular cultureand issues of racial identity.His image, The Jerk, Carl Reiner, 1979(2004), illustrates a duality in meaning, one with complex culturalundertones as well as full frontal absurdity.*The Russian collaborate AES+F, the Israeli artist Emily Jacir and theemerging artists Ahlam Shibli and An-My L+ create works inspired by thepolitics of their respective cultures, as they exist in today’s society. Le, a political refugee from Vietnam, became involved in a Vietnam Warre-enactor group in South Carolina in which she participated and tookphotographs of Vietnam battles restaged on her newly adopted American soil. Under the guise of photojournalism
Customer Review: An impeccably-made survey of contemporary photography.
This is a wonderful book. I bought it truly as a “vitamin”, to give myself a kick in the pants regarding my own photography: to find some sources of inspiration that were more up-to-date than my usual heroes (Minor White, Cartier-Bresson, etc). It served that purpose admirably. The artists and photographs are carefully chosen, and the essays are well-written. Some of the essays are even in English rather than art-speak. There is an incredible range of styles represented here, encompassing both conceptually-driven and aesthetically-driven art. Because of the large size and beautiful paper and production, this book is a tactile and visual treat that would make a great gift for any photographer on one’s holiday list.
Customer Review: An overview of photography
It’s big, it’s well produced and it’s a worthy addition to a photo book collection. Phaidon is a great publisher and the production values of this book are up to their usual high standards. The concept of “New Perspectives in Photography” is an ambitious topic, given the broad variety of art photography practice around the world. If you could sum up the main trend, it would have to be the movement away from the photo document and towards a conceptual exploration of the photographic object as it relates to the human experience. It is not photography, it is photographic.

Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir

Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir Like many reclusive celebrities, Big Foot is misunderstood. In his touching memoir Me Write Book he wants to set the record straight, proving that although he s larger, hairier, and more foul-smelling than most of us, he s really not so different underneath.

Only the most coldhearted among us could look on without compassion as this hirsute Everyman struggles bravely with casual cannibalism, Pringles potato crisps, embarrassing moments with peach Schnapps, the desperate loneliness of personal ads, and philosophical quandaries.

Readers will never forget the plaintive voice from the wilderness that howls from every page of this searing, intimate account of a man-beast in the promised land.
Customer Review: Hilarious!
Roumieu is a genius. His artwork and humor mesh perfectly. I can’t wait for his next Bigfoot book!
Customer Review: Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir
Beware this book is full of profanity!!! Wish someone would have put that on a review before I wasted my money (if someone did put it on a review I missed it).