Grace
Sandy
Karen
Billy
Used price: $1.19
Collectible price: $5.90
Buy one from zShops for: $1.07
This will cure your longing of the cluetrain manifisto stuffs. Beautifully written and meaningless at some point, but you goona love it i guess, you gonna crave for more, and then subscribe the newsletter.
GO buy the book, and immerse yourself. I have read some part of the book more than 3 times. Amen.
So here's my advice go buy the book, RageBoy needs the cash. If you like Tom Robbins, Hunter S Thompson, and the Gonzo style read away, you'll enjoy it. Perhaps you will find some stuff to digest, even without ingesting any substances on the Schedule I drug list.
If you didn't like Cluetrain Manifesto, Gonzo Marketing, or any Gonzo writing buy the book anyways, for the reasons stated above. Then hide the book in your bookshelf and wait until a really dark night, one in which your soul is screaming for mercy while the night rages in a Category 5 Hurricane and your only fresh reading material is a copy of Reader's Digest you have flipped through already 15 times. Your mind goes hungry, for something unanswered and unknown, and you will recall this book hiding in some dark corner of the bookshelf covered in dust and a three month old edition of Fast Company magazine. You will pull it off the shelf and find yourself drawn to the words expressed inside and the walls of illusion come crashing down inside your mind. Either that or you'll take a gun and pull a Hemmingway. Doesn't much matter to me, if you survive reading it you might even find yourself signing up for Entropy Gradient Reversals, but let me warn you the shotgun is alot quicker and painless, but it's not nearly as much fun.
List price: $19.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $11.17
Collectible price: $19.95
Buy one from zShops for: $12.98
It's the distilliation - the essence - of what Sandman is about. Some might argue that Fables and Reflections or even Dream Country would be a better representative, a series of stunning vignettes whose swirling, mythic and dream like quality (I'm thinking of the fabulous Ramadan story) are about horror, fate, the depths of humanity and all that good stuff in the great traditions of fire-side story tellers.
But Brief Lives is something even better.
As Mikal Gilmore noted in his introduction to the graphic novel edition of The Wake, one of the seminal joys of the Sandman is hearing Gaiman's voice grow clearer with each passing issue. The progression from "The Sleep of the Just" to "The Tempest" is an astounding one; watching him grow makes any burgeoning and would-be writer both jealous and elated. The entire idea of the Sandman was revolutionary and different and pregnant with greatness (yes, a dangerous term, but applicable) - but it wasn't until Brief Lives that we _really_ saw what this thing could be capable of. Some argue that point occurred in "The Sound of Her Wings" in the first story arc, or perhaps Seasons of Mists, but _anyone_ who has read Brief Lives understands the truth....
This story is breathtaking. It's a romp. It's a ride. It blows you away, grabs you, throws you down forever into the endless sky with a wild rush of words and images (the matching of Jill Thompson to this story is once more pure genius), it picks up a fatal and final inertia that doesn't slow down until the final page is turned - that is, the final page of the last issue of the series. It's from this point that the story picks up speed and urgency. Everything revolves around the central act of kindness that concludes Brief Lives, and all the tragedy and death and destruction and redemption that occur later on are merely a reflection of that single act.
This is _the_ story. Everything before was technically brilliant, possessed of a fresh and blindingly new verve that the comic books medium hadn't seen in quite some time - but it was somehow _distant_. Brief Lives is full of a passionate proximity, a feeling of the here and now, a sense of both the confusion of every day life and miraculously together with that, the grand rush of scope. This is where Gaiman gets his chops.
I can't recommend this book enough. It's got a winding, willowy wisdom (how's that for alliteration?) that stays with you beyond the waking realms, the kind of gift you return to as the years pass by, something that grows with you as oppossed to on you. Each time I read it I read something new and fresh, and each time I read it I never fail to be moved and inspired.
Brief Lives is what it's all about. Peter Straub couldn't have said it any better when he wrote in his afterword....
"If this isn't literature, nothing is."
The turning points are, due to the non-linear narrative, generally spread out through most of the volumes of the Sandman story, but to me the ultimate change of the storyline occurs as Morpheus initiates a final rendez-vous with his human son, as described in this wonderful, and not least powerful, collection of beautiful stories. In short a powerful set of thoughts on the nature of "the word for things not being the same always".
The presence of the Almighty is felt briefly through actions, beyond the control of even the Endless Seven, and dialogues reflecting an inevitable masterplan that will seal the fate of Morpheus as we have come to know him.
Used price: $20.00
Buy one from zShops for: $35.98
Chapter 9 helps distill the essence of the Prime Mover into how one would use their abilities to make a billion dollars. Luckily, for those of us who will not use the same amount of drive and tenacity, we are shown that we can get by making a mere 2-100 million dollars.
Concluding the book are appendices showing the monetary figure of Prime Mover generated wealth and essays by Dr. Locke and Dr. Peikoff. Readers not familiar with Dr. Peikoff's essay style are in for a great treat.
If you've ever listened to Dr. Locke's taped lecture series on the traits of American Business Heroes, you'll fall in love with this more essentialized, internationally-scope tome. It is remarkable.
"The Prime Movers"
Traits of the Great Wealth Creators
However, I must confess, that the moment I started to read this book, I got hooked. It reads almost like a detective story, and I couldn't let it down.
For businessmen, this is a revelation.For non- businessmen or women it is a fascinating book, explaining and summerizing what is not only important for business, but how it concerns also your own well being.Objectivists will highly enjoy the clarity and logic of the ideas presented.This is a spirit uplifting book.
From the foreword by John Allison, CEO,, BB&T, Inc., making emphasize on the progress of the last 250 years compared to the previous 25.000 ones, to the basic ideas which made this development possible, to the article "Hatred of the Good", by E. Locke and appendix B by L. Peikoff "Why Business Need Philosophy", this is a a unique and outstanding book. Dr.Locke keeps the reader highly motivated to rush from one chapter to the next one.
This delightful book, based solely on Objectivist premises, is a wonderful reading experience.
I wonder, if Dr. Locke considers this book his masterpiece.
Horst Jepsen, businessman (a proud one)
To his credit, Dr. Locke doesn't accept the prevailing view that rational self-interest is evil - or that humble self-sacrifice is noble. That's what makes this book special - in addition to Locke's ability to cut to the essential aspects of creativity in business.
I found Dr. Locke's survey of the great wealth-creators to be as unique as the subjects he studies. Guided by an objective standard for gauging productive prowess, Locke identifies a handful of the most crucial personality traits held in common by history's great business creators and leaders. One of my favorites is "love of ability in others." Successful employees at every level of business will be familiar with the envy and resentment they often get from their bosses. Locke shows that those aren't the successful bosses, that it takes an enormous ego (and self-confidence) to seek out and promote the best employees one can find.
In Dr. Locke's book we learn what's never yet been taught about the productive giants of yesterday and today. Better still, we're given a reality-based, time-tested, and objective yardstick for identifying the giants of tomorrow.
Want to make a bundle in business? Locke says you must develop an independent vision, an active mind, competence and confidence. You must be an activist (not a mere "idea man") and be passionate about your work. You must practice the virtues of rationality, honesty, integrity, independence, justice and self-interest (self-preservation). You must buck conventional opinion, which holds that rational greed is practical, but morally suspect. Locke shows us that rational greed is practical precisely because it's moral. Immoral approaches to business tend, in contrast, to dissipate wealth.
Locke doesn't just advise us. In bringing alive the achievements of the wealth creators, in citing their successes and quoting their own philosophies, he lets the creators speak to and inspire us. Here, Locke AND Rockefeller advise.
This book deserves the rapt attention of entrepreneurs, business leaders, board members, venture capital firms, executive recruiters and business students. It's not just a history lesson. It's a principled "how-to" book with a moral-philosophic base that permits the user to feel he can create ever more wealth and - equally important - feel proud of the wealth he's created.
Used price: $0.90
Collectible price: $5.29
Used price: $2.95
Buy one from zShops for: $5.00
The book, which lacks an introduction or conclusion, may be challenging for modern readers. Locke's writing covers a wide range of topics; conquest, paternal power (i.e. the power that fathers have over their children), despotical power and his over-arching central concern, property.
The main ideas of the book are that government exists by the consent of the governed who found government for the purpose of securing their lives, rights and property. Locke frequently contrasts people who live in a state of nature (i.e. no government; people enjoy considerable personal freedom) and those that live under government. Under Locke's view of the social contract, men give up give up the unlimited freedom they enjoyed in the state of nature so as to secure their life, limb and property more securely under government. There is also some discussion of the idea of separation of powers; what is interesting here is that Locke does not use the traditional formulation (i.e. executive, legislative, and judicial), rather he discusses executive, legislative and "federative" (by which he means the conduct of self-defense and foreign policy) powers.
The type of government that Locke describes more closely resembles the system employed by Britain and Canada, more than the United States. He conceives of a monarch or prince at the top of the government (as in Britain and Canada; the Monarch is the Head of State), with the legislature representing the people (Parliament) and so on. This is not to deny that this book still holds value for Americans, as other reviewers have pointed out.
All that said, I would not recommend this particular edition of the book. The lack of introduction to put Locke in his historical context can make the book difficult to understand and some of Locke's 17th century references will simply be skipped over by most readers. However, if you simply want a copy of the book that is plain and plan to quote from it, this edition is quite useful. Each paragraph of the book is numbered allowing a researcher to precisely footnote information.
John Locke was an early enlightened thinker and philosopher in England and sought to bring reason and intelligent discussion into civil society. His endeavor to reconstruct the nature and purpose of government, a social contract is proposed. Locke sets out with a purpose, a detailed discussion of how society came to be and the nature of its inception. Locke was associated with powerful scientific minds of the time, one in particular was Robert Boyle.
Locke used Natural Law to define his thoughts. The sociopolitical climate of the seventeenth-century England, at that time was in violent civil war, counter-revolution, restoration, deposition of the monarchy and the subsequent Parliamentry rule with the eventual restoration of the monarchy.
Locke matured as a social philosopher and wrote "Two Treatises of Government" (1690) of which the second is most widely read. Locke's dedication to individual liberty, government by consent, the social contract and the right to revolt against governments that endanger the rights of citizens, has made the legacy of Locke. Later read by the Founding Fathers of the United States, Locke's ideas made an important impression and the fight for freedom began.
This is an important treatise and should be read by all as the foundation of a government by its citizens consent.
Used price: $0.01
Collectible price: $0.99
Thomas P.