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Emigrant Entrepreneurs: Shanghai Industrialists in Hong Kong
Wong Siu-Lun
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 International
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ASIN: 0195842138 |
Book Description
The relocation of Shanghai cotton mills to Hong Kong after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 was an event of major significance for Hong Kong's postwar economy. Focusing on the relationship between ethnicity and entrepreneurship, this book is a major contribution to the
understanding of industrial management, in general, and the Chinese industrial base in Hong Kong in particular.
Book Description
A rich, colorful history of California centering on the untold story of America 's biggest farmer, J.G. Boswell, who controls more than $1 billion worth of water rights and real estate in the heart of the state.
J.G. Boswell is the biggest farmer in America. Over the past fifty years he has built a secret empire while thumbing his nose at nature, politicians, labor unions and every journalist who ever tried to lift the veil on the ultimate "factory in the fields." Now eighty years old, with an almost pathological bent toward privacy, Boswell has spent the past few years confiding one of the great stories of the American West to Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman. The King of California is the previously untold account of how a Georgia slave-owning family migrated to California in the early 1920s, drained one of America 's biggest lakes in an act of incredible hubris and carved out the richest cotton empire in the world. Indeed, the sophistication of Boswell 's agricultural operation--from lab to field to gin--is unrivaled anywhere.
Much more than a business story, this is a sweeping social history that details the saga of cotton growers who were chased from the South by the boll weevil and brought their black farmhands to California. It is a gripping read with cameos by a cast of famous characters, from Cecil B. DeMille to Cesar Chavez.
Customer Reviews:
The king of California.......2006-11-04
This book is way too long and somewhat redundant and boring. The basic story is good, but the author takes too much time and too many pages to tell it.
History, Biography and Expose?.......2006-06-23
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in politics, agriculture, or water rights. It is a well-written and very readable.
It follows four generations of the Boswell family to trace how they assembled the largest industrial farm in the world. Along the way, the authors explore the history of the San Joaquin valley and those who came there to farm it, those who left and those who got left behind. For every group that made a fortune, there were many others who were disappointed. There are plenty of interesting stories of Washington and Sacramento politics, and stories of common people following dreams.
The book examines the effect of large scale farming on farm owners, on those who work the farms now and those who worked them in the past. It provides some good background on the politics of water rights and government involvement in farming, and on the involvement of agriculture in local, state and federal politics.
If you are interested in the politics and history of water in the western states, Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner is one of the best books I have read on any subject.
Overstuffed but Worth Reading.......2005-11-26
I grew up in Fresno, in the shadow of agribusiness. The story behind "King of California" is a fascinating and important one but I'm not sure this "biography" does it justice. I disliked the awkward mixture of history and journalism. Is this an expose, a biography or history? Its never really clear and the way the book is organized, around the four seasons, is particularly opaque. What does it mean to call a section, "winter?" when it is covering history spanning decades and contains interviews with living people? That said, the material is fascinating. From the role the Boswell's played in taming Tulare Lake, to the development of modern cotton farming, the politics of agriculture and the way big business in general got access and results in subsidies and favorable policy. Early on, Tulare Lake and by extension, the San Joaquin Valley in its pre-U.S. days is described with a vividness I've rarely read elsewhere. However, the description of the Boswell's roots in racism and its legacy in the Central Valley is definitely worth telling but I think it gets too little space here and competes with so many other subjects. Frankly, I'm surprised that this book has gotten the acclaim that it has. While its clearly well researched, the writing is spotty lucid in some places and sensationalized elsewhere. I think the book tries to cover far too many topics; Water politics, cotton farming, racism in California, family history, corporate intrigue, labor issues, flood control and company towns. Had it narrowed it focus to just water, cotton and corporate intrigue, I think it would have been a far more powerful book.
Surfaced and Harpooned.......2005-04-26
This far-reaching book is quite an accomplishment in biography and investigative journalism. Arax and Wartzman cover the history of the immense Boswell farming company of California, and the two guys named J.G. (the founding uncle and the current chairman, his nephew) who built the company into the largest cotton operation on Earth. Through cutthroat competitive instincts and political wheeling-and-dealing, the Boswells amassed tens of thousands of acres in California's Central Valley, and were instrumental in eliminating what was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, as the former Tulare Lake was transformed into a festering network of levees, canals, and cesspools dedicated to the mass production of cotton. Thus, the Boswells built the area's environment, culture, and economics for their own profitability.
The book also serves as a great exploration of the business of factory farming, detailing the racism and poverty experienced by Black and Mexican workers, as well as the shifty agricultural and hydrological politics of Big Ag in California - as the Boswells and their competitors/allies buy politicians, stack laws and regulations in their favor, and claim flood control as a reason to alter the natural course of rivers and to completely drain the vast Tulare Lake. Best of all, we see how big business really works out West, with the hypocrisy of so-called rugged outdoorsmen (actually pampered CEO's) who incessantly rail against government interference while also taking in millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies that are meant to help the little guy. This book is immensely informative but does often get tied up in unnecessary details, such as descriptions of petty political shenanigans in the construction of a nearby dam. But the motto of the Boswell clan has been that a whale can't be harpooned if it doesn't come to the surface (a legacy of silence and obfuscation), but Arax and Wartzman have deftly cracked into the wall of secrecy surrounding the Boswells and their often ill-gotten empire, [~doomsdayer520~]
Tremendous historical, political, and social epic.......2004-11-09
The book centers around three generations of Boswells as they migrated from Green County Georgia to Kings County California and became the largest producers of cotton in the world, without becoming a household name.
The book also tells of the natural, social, and political histories of the San Joaquin Valley from the days of indigenous peoples and the first Spanish invaders to the present day.
The epic is a fascinating study of twentieth century American history, society, economics, business, finance, management, politics, public policy, labor relations, mechanization, technology, modernization, and nature.
The more personal stories of family, romance, crime, and punishment read more like a good novel.
Some have found the authors liberally biased, but as a conservative, I found the authors well balanced in their presentations of all sides of the stories.
As others have said, the scope is huge and the research extensive. As someone who was born and raised in Kings County California, I found this heretofor unknown local history to be quite fascinating. Nevertheless, I believe this book will have broad appeal to many readers.
Book Description
In the tradition of Mark Kurlansky's Cod and Salt, this endlessly revealing book reminds us that the fiber we think of as ordinary is the world's most powerful cash crop, and that it has shaped the destiny of nations. Ranging from its domestication 5,500 years ago to its influence in creating Calvin Klein's empire and the Gap, Stephen Yafa's Cotton gives us an intimate look at the plant that fooled Columbus into thinking he'd reached India, that helped start the Industrial Revolution as well as the American Civil War, and that made at least one bug—the boll weevil—world famous. A sweeping chronicle of ingenuity, greed, conflict, and opportunism, Cotton offers “a barrage of fascinating information” (Los Angeles Times).
Customer Reviews:
Planted it - Picked it - Wore it - Now, I've read it !.......2006-08-21
This is dramatic history, hidden in the very creases of our jeans. As I kid on a farm, I picked cotton for my cousins and farmer families in the little known cotton kingdom of Florida; Santa Rosa County. The picking machines were just coming into play and school kids were being forced out of a labor niche to go save America from communism in Southeast Asia. We were further displaced to corporate America where few could relate to an ice cold jug of water at the end of a long row of cotton. The machines gained. The successful farmers became family corporate enterprises and bulked up with acreage and machinery. Between cotton and peanuts, the farming businessmen now make very good livings for themselves and many more whom they employ.
This book helped me to spin the story of my own youth into the yarn of America and the world. It should be a movie .. or better yet, a 5 part Discovery Channel series. The history channel is so stuck on war features, it may miss the huge story of war in this book because of its unasuming title. This is a book that every person in the cotton business should read and one that every student of world history and American history should read.
I hope to spread the word in my own blogs from me3tv.com.
Book Description
Cotton's Renaissance is the story of one of the more remarkable feats in the annals of enterprise. At its center, the book shows how U.S. cotton growers lost half their market share in the 1960s and 1970s and then won it back through highly innovative marketing and organization. To place this unprecedented achievement in perspective, the authors analyze and interpret the responses of cotton growers over two hundred years to the timeless problems of nature, technology, markets, and politics. The upshot is a dramatic history of how growers learned--after more than a century and a half of trying to manage supply--how to drive and shape demand for their commodity. This key change in perspective and behavior was accomplished by the creation of a unique public-private company that helped thousands of growers to cultivate demand and to survive in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. The impact of Cotton Incorporated on the markets for cotton was nothing less than an entrepreneurial coup in strategy and organization. In its "total marketing" effort to rebuild cotton's market share, it fostered substantial scientific, technological, and managerial improvements in the quality and performance of cotton. In doing so, it has enhanced the efficiency not only of the farmers who grow cotton but also of the intermediaries who transform it into consumer goods. This account of the cotton industry's revival, which took place at every level of production and distribution, holds many important lessons for anyone interested in history, economics, marketing, or public policy.
Book Description
Before social unrest shook the region in the 1970s, Central America experienced more than a decade of rapid export growth by adding cotton and beef to the traditional coffee and bananas. Williams shows how the rapid growth contributed to the present social and political crisis, examines the causes of the export boom and who benefited from it, and shows the impact of the boom on land use, the ecology, and the conditions of life in the rural areas.
Customer Reviews:
University of California anthropologist, Carol A. Smith, reviews Williams' work.......2006-02-11
University of California anthropologist, Carol A. Smith, reviews Williams' work in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, "What took place in Central America calls for comparative research. The most useful and original comparisons have been done by Robert Williams, an economist who uses sociological, historical, and ethnographic methods in his research. Robert Williams's Export Agriculture (1986) observes that cotton and cattle production for export expanded hugely in all five countries and led to significant dispossession of peasants everywhere, including Costa Rica. But the five Central American states handled peasant protest quite differently, with both Costa Rica and Honduras carrying out land reform and expanding services while the three other states responded with repression and militarization-which led to war. In States and Social Evolution (1994), Williams examines the social and economic factors that led to two different kinds of states in Central America-the three revolutionary countries being controlled by rigid oligarchies, the other two being led by more open political groups. (Williams) finds an explanation in the social and political relations created by the coffee export economy, the first major post-colonial export in the region, which played a critical role in state formation."
The environmental repercussions of export agriculture.......2001-11-06
Williams' book deals with the issue of export agriculture in Central America and its repercussions on the economic, ecological, and social well-being of this troubled region. Williams divides the book into three parts, according to the main exports of Latin America. First, Williams deals with cotton's emergence as a cash crop and its positive and negative aspects. Second, Williams deals with cattle and the effects it has had upon the land and the men who till it. This book is interesting in the way it views the cash crops in an economic light and in the ways they affect farmers, large
farmers, and the working class.
The environment has blessed Central America with some of the best land anywhere on earth. Central America's pacific coastal plain, for example, is ideal for growing cotton. The ecological consequences of growing cotton, however, are quite severe. The stress on the soil is severe, considering this crop is not for subsistence. While the law requires that the land be cleared as to protect the land, it is nearly inevitable to prevent the volcanic soils to be vulnerable from wind and water erosion. In the rainy season, however, thunderstorms take their toll on the soil since they make the land prone to flooding. This damage is in addition to the fact that the best lands are used for the production of cotton, while simultaneously polluting the coastal eco-system. The fertility of the soil was short lived in Central America, since after four or five years of consecutive cultivation the light soils of the coastal plain began to lose their natural fertility. This, in turn, led to the need to use chemicals to yield more crops per acre of land.
In regards to cattle, Williams argues that the emerging demand for beef in the United States as a result of the fast food business precipitated the need to make subsistence plots in Latin America land for cattle grazing. For institutions like the World Bank, AID and IADB cattle was seen as a pragmatic, quick way to achieve export led growth. By most accounts, this land was carved from Central American forests. Swidden agriculture (slash and burn) practiced by indigenous allowed for the land to be regenerated after the patch had been abandoned. Under modern methods of forest clearing, the land is almost always relegated to remaining fallow. Modern methods of clearing have allowed for flatlands below the grazing grounds to become subject to flooding. Williams concludes that for those privileged enough to gain access to bank credit, the beef export boom meant a quick way to expand their fortunes, while for those who planted for survival it spelled impending doom.
Book Description
Cotton has touched off wars and revolutions, inspired astonishing inventions, laid waste to entire ecosystems, and enslaved untold millions of people. Alexander the Great carried cotton cloth on his back from India to Europe. Starting from the late eighteenth century, the fiber transformed creaky rural England into the greatest industrial power on earth. Today, cotton is, if anything, more preeminent than ever and at the center of raging global controversies. Now Stephen Yafa delves deep into the past to tell the amazing story of this humble, infinitely adaptable fiber that has—again and again—reinvented our world.
Domesticated simultaneously in Peru and Pakistan some 5,500 years ago, later a prime motive for the colonization of the New World, as Yafa shows, cotton's most profound impact came after the Industrial Revolution. By the mid-nineteenth century, the vast plantations of the antebellum South, the grim mill towns of New England, and the soot-spewing factories of the English Midlands were knit together in a global system of exploitation and enslavement—all of it based on cotton. When Marx and Engels composed The Communist Manifesto, they chose cotton manufacturing as the prime symbol of capitalism run amok. Beautifully researched and written, Big Cotton traces the cultural, economic, and social history of the “world's friendliest” fiber from the kingdoms of Mesopotamia to the Gap.
Customer Reviews:
The Lowell plan.......2007-10-02
Basing a book on a commodity is not a unique plan, but in this instance it is a fruitful way of looking at social, political, and economic history. My review necessarily simplifies some of the issues presented. My interest in the subject is caused in part by having visited Lowell and having become astonished at the vast size of the National Park Service installation there. In reading the book I learned that Paul Tsongas, a boyhood friend of the author, was instrumental in having the National Park Service turn Lowell into a living museum. (The author grew up in Lowell, a city famous for Jack Kerouac, its mills, and the Lowell system of employer-employee relations.)
Cotton has versatility. Down sides to the cotton story abound. Child laborers were used in Manchester, England. Cotton crops and irrigation resulted in the diversion of the waters of the Aral Sea. India traded cotton cloth with China and Indonesia at the time of Alexander the Great. In the seventeenth century cotton replaced wool in England and silk in France. The governments attempted bans.
In the eighteenth century Richard Arkwright created the factory system. English people desired the fabrics called chintz and calico. Cotton manufacturing provided a source of immense wealth. Arkwright spun his cotton thread establishing an industrial dynasty near the Derwent River. Afterwards Watts's steam engine and Cartwright's power loom resulted in cotton manufacturing in Manchester. In America Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Slater, a former employee of Arkwright, built a cotton yarn factory in Rhode Island. By 1809 there were eighty-seven operations in New England and New York. Slater limited himself to cotton yarn. Francis Cabot Lowell used his photographic memory to become a sort of industrial spy in Manchester, England. The mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, automated using the Jacquard system.
Lowell introduced corporate paternalism since farmers could not spare their sons but sent daughters to work at the mill. Anthony Trollope believed that Lowell was a commercial utopia. The harmonious view of the enterprise lasted about twenty years. Later the inevitable friction between workers and management took place. At any rate, Lowell never was the ideal community observers believed it was. The good press was a product of a publication, THE LOWELL OFFERING, written by the female workers. The Lowell mill was less life-draining, less polluted than comparable English factories.
Another concern of conscience was that cotton and slavery were connected strongly. The owners, the Boston Associates, were dubbed the Lords of the Loom. Mill towns included Saco, Lynn, Chicopee, Taunton, Dover, Fall River. Daniel Webster, taking a moderate stance and defending monied interests, was shunned by his good friends Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Greenleaf Whittier. Irish immigrants, more malleable than the daughters of the farmers, formed a great portion of the workforce of the mills by 1860. Northern mill owners and English textile lords misjudged the length of the war. After the war and the immense losses of the South, the price of cotton fell. The share-cropping era commenced.
The development of ring spinning and the bobbin changer reduced the need for skilled operators. This enabled owners to build mills closer to the raw materials, a case of disruptive technology. Factory villages emerged in North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Most complexes were financed by Northern investors. The author contends that cotton democratized greed. In childhood Andrew Carnegie was a bobbin boy.
The Cone brothers of Baltimore convinced the Southern mills to upgrade the quality of their product. In the West Levi Strauss sold blue jeans, denim. Adding rivets strengthened the work garments. Levi's became a brand pioneer. Sanford Cluett developed a process to preshrink cotton fabrics in 1933. In 1970 denim resurrected the American cotton apparel industry. The Gap and Banana Republic raised the public appeal of cotton pants, blue jeans and khakis.
Research has produced transgenic cotton seed. We are all in the dark about the future of biotechnology. In America two hundred thousand textile workers have lost their jobs since 1997. Cotton, subsidized in the U.S., has been used by both liberal and conservative journals to illustrate the cruel arrogance of power. The National Park Service facility at Lowell is described in this splendid book's Afterward. A glossary, notes, bibliography, and index follow.
Flawed fabric.......2007-03-03
This book is an adequate introduction to the long and convoluted history of cotton, but not, I hope, the finest piece of scholarship on the subject.
Big Cotton provides fascinating tidbits about the cotton plant and the fabric made from it. Although Yafa's "cotton-centric" approach to history is sometimes simplistic, it still makes for interesting reading. However, the writing tends to be clumsy and confusing, and the textile puns are overused. Also, for my tastes, Yafa's political and regional biases intrude into his subject far too often.
"...fanning that trigger.".......2006-10-21
"Gunsligers, snake-eyed varmints, low-down horse rustlers, and lily-livered scumsuckers bit the dust when John Wayne pulled out his six-shooter and started fanning the trigger." (p. 213) Trigger???
That sentence should give you an idea of just how jarring, flip and accurate this author is.
Three crops are the foundation of modern Europe's (and America's) economic and imperial hedgemony over the rest of the world: spices, sugar and cotton. Cotton is, simply, the genesis of the industrial revolution and the resurrection of American slavery. As such, the subject is incredibly important. Mr. Yafa isn't up to the task.
Yes, he's trying to write a popular history rather than a scholarly treatise. But his focus is virtually completely on America. As such is scope is simply too limited.
He mentions aniline as the foundation for synthetic indigo dye in passing in a long, rambling aside about blue jeans. Aniline and the coal-tar it's derived from are the cornerstones of modern chemistry, the chemical industry and the modern (early 20th century) German economy. Eh. No biggie.
If the guy could write, I'd probably be more forgiving of the book's shortcomings. It is a big subject.
Despite the importance of cotton, there aren't very many books extant about its history. Yafa doesn't have the sweep the subject deserves, but you will learn a few things, at least some of the outline of the story.
A lack of coherence.......2006-07-17
"Big Cotton" and US agricultural subsidies are big news in the world of trade. Yafa teases a promise to enlighten on this situation, but fails to deliver.
Yafa knows there is a big and tangled picture here to illustrate, but is unable to work out the world view and settles instead for a series of scenes in cotton's long history. The start of the industrial revolution in England, the rise of Lowell, MA, the beginning of Levi Straus & Co are written as grand chapters containing some amusing anecdotes, but sitting in isolation.
In the final chapters, pesticides and genetically-modified cotton appear, largely wrapped in a diatribe on the evils of both rather than any real analysis. Yafa has left out how the South changed from a resion of sharecroppers pre-WW II to industrial farming by the mid-50's.
Most disappointing are the final chapters on the current world trade. There is a complex story to be told here of US politics and farming as well as farming in Africa. Yafa misses most of this. The devil is in the details of most of this story. With few if any numbers and no detail of costs or pricing Yafa cannot capture this story. It does not lend itself to a journalistic approach, although Yafa's refernces to stories in the Wall Street Journal suggest that the WSJ writers may have written a better piece on the subject than "Big Cotton".
Meanwhile, Yafa purports to tell a tale worldwide in scope, yet his "Big Cotton" is really a US story. After 300 pages of almost exclusively US tales we are told that China is the biggest current producer. Where did the Chinese industry come from? Or Pakistan's or India's?
If you are looking for the story of cotton, keep looking - this is not the book.
Cotton's Compendium.......2005-12-11
This is the complete story of cotton's global, economic impact from the first recordings of reported history up to and including our current era.. Big Cotton is the most complete history of this cloth yet written.
It is the an economic story highlighting how cotton cultivation and production have profoundly shaped the past 5,500 years of human history. From India to Europe to the United States, this plant has defined the economic and social institutions that endure today, from agricultural economies to the industrial revolution, from slavery and the Underground Railroad to wage slavery, from the American Civil War and the most marvelous technological accomplishments to environmental and social disasters of truly epic, global proportions.
Driven by greed, fomenting social and economic misery while providing the cheapest and most durable of human clothing and fashion worldwide, Stephen Yafa's remarkably excellent story is the most well written book I have ever read.
Book Description
A celebrated triumph of historiography, Rockdale tells the story of the Industrial Revolution as it was experienced by the men, women, and children of the cotton-manufacturing town of Rockdale, Pennsylvania. The lives of workers, managers, inventors, owners, and entrepreneurs are brilliantly illuminated by Anthony F. C. Wallace, who also describes the complex technology that governed all of Rockdale’s townspeople. Wallace examines the new relationships between employer and employee as work and workers moved out of the fields into the closed-in world of the spinning mule, the power loom, and the mill office. He brings to light the impassioned battle for the soul of the mill worker, a struggle between the exponents of the Enlightenment and Utopian Socialism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the ultimately triumphant champions of evangelical Christianity.
Customer Reviews:
Nice intimate view of my neighborhood.......2007-05-08
Living west of Philadelphia, you get a sense of history just seeing old mill remnants and stone homes. This lets you see how they got there. My side of Aston, PA is the site of all this going on, people, mills, economics, religion. Neat book.
Book Description
"Crammed with practical suggestions for improving the way you communicate..."--John Cotton, Director, Group Human Resources, Barclays pic.
Internationally known management consultant Rupert Eales-White reveals his foolproof approach to managing work relationships, using the science of effective questioning for workers at all levels.
Customer Reviews:
A Good Read!.......2001-02-17
Author Rupert Eales-White emphasizes the importance of using active listening, focusing on a particular subject, and asking good open-ended questions to get productive results from interviews and conversations. He mixes a few examples with specific how-to principles outlining ways to structure effective conversations. This generally solid book has the feel of a textbook. Some readers may find it too structured or basic, since the author breaks down conversations into sentences with some detail. The book's approach may be more appropriate in organizational cultures where people prefer a focused style of questioning. Those who prefer a more informal, casual conversational style may find his approach less suitable. We at getAbstract.com recommend this book to human resource professionals, to those facing critical interviews, and to those who wish to think strategically about their conversational, information-gathering, or persuasive skills.
These Reviews Are Wacked.......2000-07-07
Why is it that all seven of the previous reviews(and the only ones) have been written by people (or a person) in Florida? Why are all the reviews generally long and the same size? Why are almost all the reviews written within a three month period, most one day after another one, when the book has been out for more than 2 years? My guess is that someone who has money to make from this book has done this. Who knows how good this book actually is? I wish bozos wouldn't flood the reviews like this. I for one am not going to purchase this book!
Learn to get "What you want everytime".......1999-12-04
Finally, a guide that provides valuable information that can be utilized in both your professional and personal life. ...you can start on the road to effective and successful communication techniques by "Asking the Right Question." Rupert Eales-White takes you through a journey of real life situations and demonstrates what seems to be a very simple and logical technique to handle almost any type of situation. Rupert Eales-White illustrates conversations that are ineffective and effective by using open-end and closed questions between a mother and teenage daughter, manager and subordinate. He shows that using the right approach, attitude, and effective listening skills will help maintain a quality conversation. He states "If we can identify poor listening in ourselves, we can improve. If we identify poor listening in others, we can rectify the situation." If you don't have good listening skills you won't be able to ask good questions or the right ones. Who knew that there is a madness to asking the right question. Rupert Eales-White proves those thinking questions through and good practice will provide you with positive results every time. Through the strategies and techniques demonstrated in this guide it will become a way of life for you. There is no doubt that using this guide will only get you what you want in any situation. Your communication skills will improve and soon your personal relationships will only blossom, your working relationships will be enhanced and you will get the confidence to meet any goals that you had been prolonging. Rupert Eales-White, "Ask The Right Question! How to Get What You Want Every Time and in Any Situation" is highly recommended and should be on your "Must Read" list.
Improving Communication Skills.......1999-12-03
"Ask the Right Question! How to Get What You Want Every Time and In Any Situation" is an easy to read as well as enlightening book. It produces factual events, dialogues and explains what is effective or ineffective in how conversations are presented. Rupert Eales-White starts his book establishing that a good conversation is a planned conversation. If a person knows what their goal is in the conversation, they can ensure that the question is geared to achieving that goal. He points out that people must consciously and deliberately focus on the other person to know what to ask, when, and how often. His do's and don'ts on effective questioning are especially helpful. Demonstrates how to be effectively persuasive by setting up key strategies and exemplifying them in conversation. Dynamically coaches the reader on how to reach mutuality of people with different views and goals. Illustrates how to deal with conflict and provides tools to assist the reader in resolution of the conflicts. There are diagrams on how to set up an effective meeting, by careful planning, order, and understanding needs and common ground. An especially informative section was how to develop relationships. Focusing on how to talk to a boss, how a boss should talk with a subordinate, how to conduct an interview, and how to delight your client. Introducing you to the "discover kings" what, why, and how to generate open dialogues, resolve issues, solve problems, or seize opportunities. Offers tips on how to become more creative while harnessing the power of group discovery. Using a simple and concise style of showing the normal way in which most conversations go with a teenager, to asking the right kind of open question in order to elicit a response that is thought out. The open question being the key. The author focuses on teaching effective questioning skills as the key to improved communications and persuasion in many situations. Listening skills, context and concept development and approach formation are also reviewed for their benefits in achieving optimal communications. Suggestions are written in easy to read format that most people will be comfortable using, with many easy to understand examples or situations most of which we can relate a similar situation to. I highly recommend "Ask The Right Question - How to Get What You Want Every Time and In Any Situation" to everyone. Even if you think you communicate very well, I am sure there is still something beneficial to be learned from this book.
Excellent communicating tips and techniques.......1999-12-01
How many times has a situation ended with unsatisfactory or negative results? Ask the Right Question! How to Get What You Want Every Time and in Any Situation by Rupert Eales-White successfully guides the reader with his everyday narratives. Eales-White uses diagrams to detail his principles and theories. He demonstrates how to approach situations using the "art and science of effective questioning." Part I of this book reveals ineffective and effective examples as they apply to everyday situations. He discloses the tips and techniques to effective communication. Asking open questions instead of closed questions helps us to achieve our goal toward conversations with a purpose. In the sequence of questioning, we should look to discover elements which include "what, where, how, when, and who." Using the best attitude and approach, we can build a quality relationship. This book reminds us that the art of listening gives conversations with a purpose rely on. Starting with the development of key skills, Part II tells us the fundamental basis for key behavior. A path for the mutuality approach is needed to make us assertive and achieve mutual respect so the relationship will not suffer. The author tells us that by thinking logically, we become more creative and this leads to the fundamental improvements for efficiency and effectiveness of the work process. By becoming more persuasive, we can establish certain key strategies. Running an effective meeting means organizing ourselves as well as the meeting so we may reverse negative factors. Effective interviews should focus on assessing skills. Part III goes into key relationships to improve performance with the "boss." Relating effectively with subordinates includes either carrying out our leadership role or determining our leadership role. An effective leader acts as developer, motivator, and coach without using excessive control. The final chapter describes the successful goal for the successful client relationship and long-term partnership. Finally, Eales-White suggestions and examples bring his points clearly to the reader. These are typical and logical in everyday personal and business relationships. This is easy reading and good self-help book, which works toward a common sense goal. This book is a must for anyone, especially managers, at all levels so they may benefit from the excellent communicating tips and techniques offered by this author.
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Clothing the Spanish Empire: Families and the Calico Trade in the Early Modern Atlantic World (The Americas in the Early Modern Atlantic World)
Marta V. Vicente
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1403972265
Release Date: 2006-12-26 |
Book Description
By the 1780s in the city of Barcelona alone, more than 150 factories shipped calicoes to every major city in Spain and across the Atlantic, from Veracruz to Montevideo. Catalan, Basque and Castilian families sent relatives throughout the Iberian Peninsula and Spanish America, hoping to enrich themselves from the trade in calicoes. Clothing the Spanish Empire narrates the lives of families on both sides of the Atlantic who profited from the craze for calicoes, and in doing so helped the Spanish empire to flourish in the eighteenth century.
Average customer rating:
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Field to Fabric: The Story of American Cotton Growers
Jack Lichtenstein
Manufacturer: Texas Tech University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0896722384 |
Customer Reviews:
A True Masterpiece.......2000-03-16
I was truly captivated by this incredibly well-written book. As I read, I felt as if I was part of the cotton industry. I could feel the dry Texas heat on a Corpus Christie farm, and I yearned to learn more and more about the plight of the American Cotton grower. If you are only going to purchase one book on this year about the American Cotton Grower, this is the one to get. A must read for any Cotton fanatic.
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