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Proving the old adage that there's no such thing as the windfall promised by the title, Westlake starts this funny divertissement with an intriguing premise: Mr. American Everyman, young, ambitious, decent, honorable husband and father, has been receiving a check for $1,000 once a month from an unknown benefactor for seven years. Just when Josh Redmont has finally stopped worrying about where the money comes from or what it means, a stranger with a foreign accent approaches him on the Fire Island ferry and clues him in. Therein hangs the tale of who's behind Josh good fortune and what kind of bill has come due for all those tax-free dollars. Unbeknownst to our hapless hero, he's been a "sleeper agent" whose paymaster has awakened him just in time to play a big role in a political assassination. How Josh gets out of a mess he had no idea he was in drives the lively narrative to its breathless conclusion. Westlake is the undisputed master of the caper genre--although Money for Nothing may not be as deviously convoluted or sidesplittingly comic as some of his earlier novels (The Ax, Put a Lid On It), it's well worth the reader's attention and appreciation. --Jane Adams
Book Description
Josh Redmont was 27 when the first check arrived, and he had absolutely no idea what it was for. Issued by 'United States Agent' through an unnamed bank with an indeterminate address in D.C., someone seemed to think Josh was owed $1,000. One month later, another check arrived, and then another, and another....and Josh cashed them all. Month after month, year after year, never a peep from the IRS, never an explanation for all this seemingly found money; the checks even followed Josh from one address to another as he moved through life. Now, after a full seven years, we find him on his way to meet the wife and kids for a summer vacation. Puzzled by the approach of a smiling stranger, Josh's stomach seizes with dread when the unwanted greeting begins with, 'I am from United States Agent.' Dumbstruck, Josh attempts to feign ignorance until he hears the words, 'You are now active.'
Customer Reviews:
Ho Hum..........2006-07-10
I'm just about done buying books from the bargain bookshelf by authors that I don't know. Everytime I do I seem to get something like this. Granted, out of my last 3 bargain books by unknown authors, this was the best. However, the competition wasn't very stiff.
This book was slow, anti-climactic, mostly boring.
A rabbit running with the wolves . . ........2006-05-28
Westlake may be the best ever at writing caper and heist stories that are both beautifully written, nail-bitingly exciting thrillers and also hilariously, literately, outrageously, off-the-wall funny. This time, the unwilling protagonist is Josh Redmont who, seven years ago, when he was working as an office temp in New York, began receiving monthly thousand-dollar checks from an uncontactable source for no known reason. He kept them and banked them -- money for nothing. Now, he's an advertising copywriter with a wife and young son, and the thousand dollars isn't such an important part of his income. And then, during a summer when his family are out at Fire Island during the week, a man comes and hands him a much larger check and tells him he is now "active." Yep -- Josh was a sleeper for an ex-Soviet republic and didn't even know it, mostly because he was part of a scam organized by Mr. Nimrin, late of the Soviet espionage service, to feather his own retirement nest. But Nimrin got in trouble himself, lost control of his scam, and now his higher-ups want their American agents-in-place to perform for the payments they've been receiving, i.e., by facilitating the assassination of a visiting bigwig in New York. And just to make sure Josh does his part, they grab his wife and son. For a nonaggressive sort, Josh manages pretty well, especially after he manages to team up with Mitchell Robbie, small-time method actor, and another unintentional sleeper; Robbie has the self-confidence Josh lacks, plus a knack for doing other people's voices. Anyway, like most of Westlake's marvelous stories, this would make a terrific film.
I Want My. . .I Want My. . .I Want My KGB.......2006-05-24
In Money for Nothing, a young slacker finds himself in dire straits. (Hey, I couldn't help it, all right). He's getting his checks for free. (Sorry. Sorry. I think I've got it out of my system now.) Let me start again.
In Money for Nothing, Josh Redmont, a college student is surprised when he starts receiving a $1000 check in the mail every month. He doesn't know who sent them or why, so, of course, he cashes them and spends the money. (Let's just say, he's not going to school on a Genius Grant,) And he keeps cashing them each month for seven years. Then, one day, a nice Russian gentleman from the KGB informs him that his cell of sleeper agents has been activated and that Josh has a little job to do--no big deal, just a minor assassination.
I had read several Donald Westlake books, most of them lighthearted novels about the unlucky burglar John Dortmunder. I was delighted with the Dortmunder stories; they manage to combine the excitement of the caper genre with the laughs of a good comic novel. I don't have those same good feelings about Money for Nothing.
The plot of Money for Nothing is thin enough to be a cover model for Vogue magazine. It isn't that compelling; this is a book that I could put down. The characters aren't much better. Westlake doesn't waste more than a few paragraphs on Josh's wife and child; they are there only to illicit your sympathy for Josh. Its hard to have any sympathy for Josh, himself; he is shallow and clueless, not the sort the reader wants to identify with. The humor, . . .well, perhaps two grins and guffhaw in the entire book. If you want to read funny crime novels, try the Dortmunder series or perhaps Fugitive Pigeon, another first rate novel by Westlake.
This novel is not up to Westlake's normal standards. If only someone had been looking over Westlake's shoulder when he was writing Money for Nothing, someone who could have said, "That ain't working. Here's the way you do it."
Could have been so much more.......2006-03-16
Josh Redmont Starts to receive 1,000 dollar checks in mail each month at first he thinks it must be some mistake be he goes ahead and deposits them and they clear so after a few he decides to try and find out who is sending them but the company seems to be a branch of the goverment and the address and phone number are incomplete so he gives up trying to find who is sending them and why.
After receiving the checks like clockwork every month for now seven years he figures it has been and is free money in the early days he really need the money but now it was just extra to help with his new wife and child he doesnt need the money as he is now a successful ad agent.
The funs starts when on a fairy ride to the summer cottage he is approached by a man who gives a bank book of a offshore bank with 40,000 dollars and tells him that he has been activated now what is he to do he has never told his wife about these checks and also as he is soon to find out that he will be part of an assaination of president of a country that has brokken off from the former Soviet Republic. In time he finds that there are others that are like him and they just might be able to help him out of this mess.
With the sart of this storyline with the idea about the money this story could have really developed into something really good but this story was just so so it was a fast read a book that could be read in a couple days but it was a little goofy at times therefore i gave it three stars
Westlake Returns To His Sixties Style.......2005-12-05
Here's a novel in the tradition of the kind of thing Westlake wrote in the 60s: it's a comic novel about a regular sap caught in a nasty predicament. He did these all the time 40 years ago: "The Busy Body," "The Fugitive Pigeon," "Help! I Am Being Held Prisoner," "God Save The Mark," "A Spy in the Ointment," "I Gave at the Office." The list was long, and most are well worth reading and reading again. This late addition to that particular type of novel is amusing, but it can't measure up to his more recent output of more serious fiction (such as "The Ax" and "The Hook"), his perennially brilliant Dortmunder novels, and his re-ignited Parker series. So: as always, read Westlake, but don't expect this light romp to measure up to his very best. For us real fans, tho, it's nice to return to the Tre Mafiosi for another cocktail....
Book Description
Lester Carmody of Rudge Hall has put himself in the hands of Dr. Twist, the aptly named owner of that establishment. Enter the Molloys, who, along with their old pal Twist, have a devious money-making scheme that depends on the greed of Carmody. And Carmody is more than happy to comply . . .
Customer Reviews:
Money for Something.......2006-03-30
Like many readers bitten by the P.G. Wodehouse bug, I at one point attempted to procure all of the Master's literary output. That spell of power reading included this early novel, which I devoured in the hardback. On later rereading, however, I somewhat revise my initial favorable impression.
Why? How can a Wodehouse book get three stars? Simply in relation to the usual five star ratings. There are plenty of nuggets here (and did this title inspire the Dire Straits song?), but if this were the first Wodehouse title you picked up, you might not find him the stellar author that those who latch onto a Jeeves or Drones or Blandings novel generally find him to be.
Wodehouse would write for more than fifty years after this story first appeared, but even then he knew which were the good bits, and the best lines from this novel would appear verbatim later on. Of course he got that idea from his first life of writing musicals for the stage (and along with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern bringing the musical to America), where the good bits are endlessly rehashed in amusing variations.
Now that both Overlook Press in hardback and Penguin in paperback are reprinting the entire run of Wodehouse, completists will certainly want to sample this novel, but for those new to Wodehouse, Jeeves or the Drones are better places to start.
Very funny, absurb, and British.......2002-08-28
John Caroll loved Patricia Wyvern whom he had known since childhood, their being neighbours.
But John's uncle, Lester Charmody, mortally offended Colonel Wyvern, Patricia's father, when the former used the latter as a bodyshield when they both accidentally walked into a blast site on Charmody's grounds. Colonel Wyvern was of the old school and demanded proper apologies where he considered it due, causing a feud in a quiet countryside of Rudge. Worse for John that Pat considered him, too homely and unexciting.
Meanwhile, Lester Charmody was brooding over money problems. It was not that he had none, he had plenty. But he considered his trove pittance. Worse was his sitting on the Charmody's heirlooms which could not be sold out of the estate.
Lester's moods was not improved by his other nephew, Hugo, who pestered him for five hundred pounds to invest in a night-club with Ronnie Fish (of Blandings background).
The stalemate might have gone on indefinitely had not the Molloys insinuated themselves into Rudge Hall. An older husband to a younger pretty wife, the couple passed themselves off as a American oil tycoon with his daughter.
A plot was hatched between the Molloys and Lester to pretend to have the heirlooms stolen, claiming insurance, smuggled to America to be sold. The services of "Chimp" Alexendar Twist was secured to remove the valuables. Of course, they all planned to double-triple-cross each other.
Amidst the intrigue, Hugo Charmody and John Carroll learned that sometimes it took an enemy to provide them with a way out of their predicaments.
A very funny book, Wodehouse was meant to be enjoyed as a light-hearted book, definitely not to be taken too seriously.
Pure Wonderful Wodehouse.......2000-03-28
Have you ever come across a P.G. Wodehouse story that isn't an absolute delight? No, and this one is no different. Wodehouse is a master with words, creating a single sentence that can have you on the floor laughing hysterically. His plots, at first glance, seem unconnected but by the end, everything works out so beautifully it's almost stunning. Not only do things work out so nicely, but it's also great fun getting there. An especially great book for a nice Sunday afternoon...
Book Description
With the music video at a historic turning point, caught between its television-fuelled past and a still-unformed Internet future, it is an ideal time to look back at the life of this mutant art form - one that united the two most influential media of the last 50 years.
Money for Nothing begins with the earliest days of the music video, when Hollywood musicals, experimental animated films, Soundies, and Scopitones fused music and image in ways that would presage the eventual form of the MTV clip. By the time A Hard Day's Night was released in 1964, the combination of pop music and short films was ready to sweep the world. It didn't take long for other acts to see the possibilities of promotional films - the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Bob Dylan had tried their hand at videos by the end of the 60s. The 1970s brought further rapid development. Artists as diverse as Queen, the Residents, Devo, and Elvis Costello all experimented with the form, establishing the boundaries of the nascent genre. By the time MTV debuted in 1981, the music video was ready for the spotlight. There were artists who construcetd whole careers around it (Madonna, Duran Duran), some who seemed occasionally flummoxed by it (Prince, U2), and those who did their best to subvert it (the Replacements, the Smiths).
In the 1990s, the music video reached its apogee, with enormous blockbuster clips from acts like Guns N'Roses, Michael Jackson, and Aerosmith marking the last moment of the video's cultural centrality. At the same time, the rise of alternative rock and hip-hop ushered in a renewed golden era of video, with big-name directors like Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Hype Williams, and Paul Hunter redefining what a music video could, or should, be.
As MTV and VH1 have morphed into lifestyle channels, the video no longer has the cultural impact it once had, but our era of YouTube and bloggers has revitalized the form, sparking a video resurgence among bands, directors, and fans. Money for Nothing is a smart, informative, and affectionate history that shows artistry and commercialism clashing, fusing, and occasionally creating works of real beauty.
Customer Reviews:
A 'must' for any collection strong in media history.......2007-04-19
MONEY FOR NOTHING: A HISTORY OF THE MUSIC VIDEO FROM THE BEATLES TO THE WHITE STRIPES is a 'must' for any collection strong in media history. Such collections will find the narrowed focus on music videos to be involving: it covers the earliest days of the music video when fusions of animated films, Hollywood musicals and more preceded MTV clips. The blend of pop music and short films fostered by the Beatles would sweep the music world - but had its roots in early Hollywood history. From the development of music-backed promotional films to 1970s alternative experiments with the medium, MONEY FOR NOTHING is packed with insights perfect for college-level media history holdings.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Never thought I would use the words "thought-provoking" and MTV in the same sentence.......2007-01-29
Austerlitz is an insightful and funny guide through the world of music video, and it's a tour worth taking. I spent a good portion of my adolescence looking on in horror at the flopping fish in Faith No More's "Epic," taking style cues from MC Hammer, and watching the worms crawl around Peter Gabriel's head, but my middle school eyes didn't see much past the flash. For those of you like me who loved it (but maybe didn't get it) the first time around, this book is an eye-opener - as when Austerlitz takes points to the beginnings of music video in WWII "Soundies" - while still holding on to the fun and nostalgia of an afternoon (or maybe a good, solid year) watching VH1. There's plenty in here for cinephile, music geek, or the merely curious. In short: buy it, read it, and enjoy.
Your cortex will thank you.......2007-01-23
The history of music videos is unwritten, even though the appeal of this strange, incandescent art form should be just as oversized for people of all ages as it is for those of us who grew up in the eighties and nineties. Austerlitz is a witty, thoughtful guide who writes with a gentle mix of scholarship and loving irreverence. Read this book no matter who you are--and then go to YouTube and burn his top 100 videos into the back of your brain.
Groundbreaking Work for Music Video Fans.......2007-01-20
As a child of the 80's who grew up in front of MTV, I have been waiting for a book like this to arrive. Music videos have been one of the most innovative and influential forms of media for the last twenty years, but there has been surprisingly little scholarship on the genre.
In that sense, Austerlitz is breaking new ground with this book. He is a savy tour guide for the visual landscape we all share. From the music video's early days, to the hair metal 80's into the ganster 90's, he manages to articulate in witty and insightful prose the nuances and salient features of the genre as a whole, and specific high points in particular.
With the explosion of youtube, and other self produced video formats, its about time we have some serious thinking published on the subject. Austerlitz does just that. At the same time, this is a book for the music video fan. Those of us who remember the glory days of Motley Crue's reign on DIAL-MTV, or that graffiti set of Parents Just Don't Understand, upto the great Guns and Roses triology will be thrilled to hear a wise and equally passionate voice take us back through these videos.
I only hope the sequal will shed some light on Trapped In the Closet.
Customer Reviews:
Real Estate Investment Business.......2007-08-25
So straight forward.
Even 30+ years after it was written, its still relevant to the real estate market - everywhere.
Let this be your property investment bible.
Boycott Robert G. Allen!!!.......2006-05-20
Robert G. Allen is a notorious and relentless internet spammer. If you should happen to somehow end up on one of his email lists like I did, he will send you several junk emails a day. Unsubscribing doesn't work, and trying to block the sender's domain is useless because the emails are sent from a different domain every time. The funny part is that the emails aren't even coded properly. They always show up as just a bunch of html code. Would you really take internet money-making advice from a guy who can't even code html properly? Anyway, his spamming practices are completely illegal and it's only a matter of time before the law catches up with him. But that shouldn't come as any surprise considering that mister Allen has been in trouble with the law before. He's had several run-ins with the IRS, lawsuits against him, and a chapter 7 bankruptcy. I would also stay away from his Nothing Down real estate methods. Many of those practices are illegal, and the president of the Nothing Down club in Atlanta wound up in federal prison because of it. For more info on Allen, visit johntreed dottcomm, click on Real Estate Investing, then click Real Estate Guru Ratings. Bottom line, don't trust this guy and don't buy his books. And if you're reading this Mr. Allen, take me off your @%#&*$ mailing list!!!
Allen's classic! Still a best seller........2005-09-28
This was the book that piqued my interest in real estate. The two words that got my attention were "Nothing Down" because at that time, I had nothing to put down on a property.
While many have followed, Allen was the first to bring to the masses the efficacy of using No Money Down techniques.
These techniques are time tested and proven. They work. This version started it all. I would recommend that you get Nothing Down 2000 which is the newest, update version.
The book that started it all!.......2005-09-25
My intro to Robert Allen was actually through his book Creating Wealth over 20 years ago! After reading Creating Wealth I added this book and went to work investing in R.E. the Robert Allen way. And just in time too. In 1986 the democrats pushed congress to pass new policies in the tax code taking away the huge tax deductions that the ultra rich were enjoying in R.E. This created an incredible selling market for the uninformed and an incredible buying opportunity for Bob Allen students who understood Real Estate.
What Bob Allen predicted in Creating Wealth about the "Upcoming Enormous Profit in Discounted Mortgages" also became fact and many of us enjoyed incredible 20%-50% or higher returns (and still are today) with this fantastic strategy.
I have since replaced my original dog eared copy of Nothing Down with Nothing Down for the 90's.
Bob Allen, great book. Thank you!
The All-Time Real Estate Classic.......2005-09-25
I came across this copy in a used book store. I bought it for a few bucks but it has made a small fortune for me. Nothing Down provides all the strategies you need to take advantage of real estate investing and launch yourself to financial self reliance.
This book has a very special place in my library and in my heart.
Book Description
In his wry and funny memoir, Edward Ugel tells the story of America's addiction to the lottery from an astonishing angle.
At age twenty-six, Ed found himself broke, knee-deep in gambling debt, and moving back into his parents' basement. It all changed, however, when he serendipitously landed a job as a salesman for The Firm--a company that offered up-front cash to lottery winners in exchange for their prize money, often paid in agonizingly small annual payments, some lasting up to twenty-five years. For the better part of the ensuing decade, Ed spent his time closing deals with lottery winners, making a lucrative and legitimate--if sometimes not-so-nice--living by taking advantage of their weaknesses . . . weaknesses he knew all too well.
Ed met hundreds of lottery winners and saw up-close the often hilarious, sometime sad outcome when great wealth is dropped on ordinary people. Once lottery winners realized their "dream-come-true" multimillion jackpots were not all that they were cracked up to be, Ed would knock on their door, offering them the cash they wanted-and often desperately need. This cash sometimes came at a high price, but winners were rarely in a position to walk the other way. As Ed learned, few of them had the financial savvy to keep up with the lottery-winner lifestyle. In fact, some just wanted their old lives back.
A charmingly neurotic gambler, Ed traveled deep into the heart of the country where he discovered the American Dream looks a lot like a day at the casino. And Ed knows casinos. In fact, his own taste for gambling gave him a unique insight into lottery winners: he intimately understood their mindset, making it that much easier to relate to them. And like lottery winners, Ed struggled to find balance in his own life as his increasing success earned him a bigger and bigger salary. Even as he relished his accomplishments, he grappled with the question: "If you are good at something that is bad for some people, does that make you a bad person?"
Ed Ugel takes the readers inside the captivating world of lottery winners and shows us how lotteries and gambling have become deeply inscribed in every aspect of American life shaping our image of success and good fortune. Money for Nothing is a witty, wise, and often outrageously funny account of high expectations and easy money.
Customer Reviews:
Shark feeds on lottery winners.......2007-10-09
This is the story of how a man finds a way to earn a good living.
He hard sells lottery winners, who are sometimes financially clueless, on his company's lump-sum deals. He chronicles the history of state lotteries, stressing how math-challenged the players are and how eager for revenues the states are. But the bulk of the book is an uncomfortable lesson in high-pressure selling of a product you really shouldn't buy.
He even explains how one poor sap asked how much money he would receive for signing away his lottery millions on the way to sign the papers!
Sarcastic and frankly smartass in tone, this is anything but a hilarious book. One good thing though -- it may keep readers away from lotteries.
Self-Loathing and Salesmanship.......2007-10-05
In this volume, Edward Ugel can't decide if he should be ashamed of himself making a damn good living bilking lottery winners (he should be) or celebrate his successful sales techniques.
The book wanders back and forth between a business text on how to sell, ("meet the customer's needs"--now there's an insight), a history of lotteries (wikipedia, maybe), a look at the pressures on people who win the various state lotteries and then become so desperate for cash they sell their annuity (for pennies on the dollar, althought Ugel never does say how much they get) and how the author mispent his own time and (large amounts of) money). That was Ugel's own form of lottery winning. He took in plenty of money as commissions for signing up these "cash-poor" winners; but inside he knew he was more like these "winners" too, because he couldn't keep any of it either.
As the book fizzles out into an account of his own gambling in Vegas and Atlantic City, he becomes one of the loser-winners he cashes out. He can't handle the finance and his own bad habits.
Too Many Hands, Not Enough Soap.......2007-09-29
Talk about mixed feelings. On one hand, I was disappointed that Money for Nothing didn't spend more time describing the experiences of lottery winners. There's some of that in this book, but not much. On the other hand, I was fascinated to read about an entire industry that I had no idea even existed.
Then there's the tone of the book. On one hand it often reads like something from the 1950s, a hard-driving salesman who parties in Vegas and motivates himself by screaming "I am King Kong!". But on the other hand, Ugel also sounds like a nerdy Gen X-er who thinks too much, like someone from This American Life, a show he's written for.
Ugel works for a company that pays lottery winners a lump sum for their future payments. He never divulges how much the company pays the lottery winners, because they pay as little as they can get away with. It depends on how much the lottery winner needs cash and how skilled the salesman is. Using California as an example, let's say you win a jackpot of 26 million dollars. If you take the annual payment option, the Califonia Lottery will pay you an average of a million dollars (before taxes) per year for 26 years. The Lottery doesn't actually have the 26 million now, but if they invest about 13 million (depending on current interest rates) now, they'll be able to pay you 26 million over 26 years. If you opt for a lump sum payment, they simply give you that 13 million now. Ugel's company does something like that for winners who don't have the lump sum option in their state or didn't when they won. He describes it as a service for people who want it. It would be a service, just like cashing checks or lending money can be a service. Except when it's those usurious check cashing places in the strip malls or loan sharks that charge exorbitant rates.
So on one hand, it's disgusting that Ugel spent years smooth-talking people into giving up their future winnings on some fast cash now, but on the other hand these lottery winners squandered a lot of money if they're so hard up they need to even talk to a Ugel or his oily colleagues.
I'm not the only one who's conflicted about this. Ugel spends much of the book justifying the business of buying out lottery winnings for pennies on the dollar. He also spends a lot of time wallowing in self-hatred for having being so successful at such a slimy occupation.
At one point Ugel describes having a ritual fried chicken dinner before closing on a big deal. "I was nervous and my palms were sweating. The sweat mixed with the grease from the chicken...I was a mess. I had to get out of there. I stopped into the bathroom and compulsively washed my hands, soap and water, soap and water, soap and water, trying to get rid of the grease." After reading Money for Nothing, I know how he feels. Keep scrubbing, Ed.
Money for Something.......2007-09-25
Ed Ugel has a cracking wit and great stories that will have you grinning as you read. For people fascinated by the American Dream, lotteries, get-rich-quick scams, and the good 'ole stock market, this is a worthy, entertaining, and strangely educational read.
Writing for nothing.......2007-09-25
I am probably one of the only people to disagree with the otherwise glowing reviews of this book, but I found the writing bad, and the topic painfully boring. I had an advanced reader copy and I really wasn't impressed with this first time author. I thought this would be a great book about lottery winners and their struggles. It is self absorbed study of a young, very immature man's probelms with his own gambling habit and apparent lack of principles. I really had to make an effort to read this one. Just not great. Dull reading and unfortunate topic matter--how to take advantage of ignorant people.
Customer Reviews:
Dated but Still Entertaining and Informative.......2004-01-10
There are few constant things in this world. Nations rise and fall, trends come and go. One thing remains constant in this ever-changing flow: the exploitation of musicians by the Recording Industry. This book presents a series of vignettes dealing with well-known rock stars getting burned, created, used, and destroyed by all-powerful record moguls.
The Beatles, Wham!, and the Who are some of the better-known bands that grace these pages. Through these bands, you will see that the Recording Industry has put much thought, effort and money into maintaining absolute control over the music that reaches your ears, via radio or CD. This book was written in the mid 1980's - well before the era of Napster or Clear Channel - and as such many of today's most interesting issues are not found here.
However, Money for Nothing provides good illumination into the Music Industry's past behavior and gives insight into the mentality that has declared a war on its own constituents in the name of stamping out "music piracy".
Customer Reviews:
Far Too Long, But She Cured My Insomnia. .......2007-09-10
I agree with the other 1 & 2 star reviewers. This book had potential, but got lost in the authors endless sentences & Narcissism. This is basically padded common sense. It was at least 100 pages too long, & somewhat repetitive. This is a find-yourself before you can be happy with a mate type of self-help book. The only thing new & refreshing was that this author unlike many feminists did not spend much time bashing, or trying to fix men. Read Camille Paglia, Susan Faludi & Norah Vincents books if you want some insights that have more than the authors opinions to base their points on.
What a fruitcake!.......2004-04-30
What a weird little skeletal-like woman. Starving herself, giving up sugar (though she admits going back on in later books), working constantly, never having kids and dismissing them as tiresome, expensive burdens to one's career, bragging incessantly about dinner at the "Cap De Ville" (some tres elegant locale) while in Granada (some tres elegant locale), enthusiastically endorsing sleeping with married men while stating she'd die if hubby did, geez!
A Fantastic Guide to Life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.......2003-12-12
This book is incredible. Reading this book was like talking to my hip girlfriend. HGB writes about finding your path in life. This book is filled with good, solid common sense advice. This is one of those books that you will refer to time & time again!
Impossible to Read.......2003-07-08
After seeing an entertaining Biography special on Helen Gurley Brown, I thought I'd track down one of her books. Unfortunately, Ms. Brown's overuse of italics and endless sentences make this book tiresome and impossible to read. She has basically sound advice, but finding her pearls of wisdom is like finding a needle in a haystack -- her nonstop jabbering over several hundred pages is a witless mess, rather than a useful guide for the modern woman.
she won't lie to you.......2003-04-23
Helen Gurley Brown has long been the bane of certain feminists, probably due to a misperception of her intent. Her message is this book is not "find-a-man, find-a-man, find-a-man," but rather "find your life," and make as much of it as you wish. the methods she proposes for carving our that life can be exhausting to contemplate, but they make you feel like you have some control over your own destiny, which is what feminists have been fighting for. so forget that she wears makeup and pretty clothes and diets rigidly, if that bothers you, and focus on the self-determination she espouses instead. great book for when you feel like a rudderless fat slob.
Average customer rating:
- Great Transcription For Guitar
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Dire Straits - Money for Nothing*
Dire Straits
Manufacturer: Hal Leonard Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Songbooks
| Music
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Music
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0793575540 |
Product Description
12 of their best complete with 12 pages of full-color concert photos. Songs include: Sultans of Swing Twisting by the Pool Walk of Life Money for Nothing and more. Brothers In Arms Down To The Waterline Money For Nothing Portobello Belle Private Investigations Romeo And Juliet Sultans Of Swing Telegraph Road Tunnel Of Love Twisting By The Pool Walk Of Life Where Do You Think You're Going?
Customer Reviews:
Great Transcription For Guitar.......2004-11-24
This is a book of music (primarily useful to guitarists) covering the material in the Dire Straits "Money For Nothing" compilation. The book features several excellent color photographs of Mark Knopfler and the band, lyrics to the songs, and music tablature for the songs. The musical transcription is excellent, and any quick glance will tell you that this is difficult material to play. Of course while some of the solos are transcribed, some of the fadeouts (obviously including the extremely long concluding soloing in "Telegraph Road") simply state "Repeat with ad lib. treatment till fade." This is generally irrelevant anyway, as only an incredibly talented guitarist could think about duplicating the solos.
Songs covered are a mixed bag of good to great, and include "Sultans of Swing," "Down to the Waterline," "Portobello Belle," "Twisting by the Pool," "Tunnel of Love," "Romeo and Juliet," "Where Do You Think You're Going?," "Walk of Life," "Private Investigations," "Telegraph Road," "Money For Nothing," and "Brothers In Arms."
This is a good book, but remember that this is very difficult material, and you will need to play it finger style. Don't feel bad if you can't make it sound exactly right; I know that I sure can't!
Average customer rating:
- Excellent Addition To Tullock's Work On Rent Seeking
- Keen and Original Analysis
- A must read for those interested in the way politicians work
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Money for Nothing: Politicians, Rent Extraction, and Political Extortion
Fred S. McChesney
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0674583302 |
Book Description
Surveys reveal that a majority of Americans believe government is run for special interests, not public interest. The increased presence and power of lobbyists in Washington and the excesses of PAC and campaign contributions, in-kind benefits, and other favors would seem to indicate a government of weak public servants corrupted by big private-interest groups.
But as Fred McChesney shows, this perspective affords only a partial understanding of why private interests are paying, and what they are paying for. Consider, for example, Citicorp, the nation's largest banking company, whose registered lobbyists spend most of their time blocking legislation that could hurt any one of the company's credit-card, loan, or financial-service operations. What this scenario suggests, the author argues, is that payments to politicians are often made not for political favors, but to avoid political disfavor, that is, as part of a system of political extortion or "rent extraction."
The basic notion of rent extraction is simple: because the state can legally take wealth from its citizens, politicians can extort from private parties payments not to expropriate private wealth. In that sense, rent (that is, wealth) extraction is "money for nothing"--money paid in exchange for politicians' inaction. After constructing this model of wealth extraction, McChesney tests it with many examples, including several involving routine proposals of tax legislation, followed by withdrawal for a price. He also shows how the model applies more generally to regulation. Finally, he examines how binding contracts are written between private interests and politicians not to extract wealth.
This book, standing squarely at the intersection of law, political science, and economics, vividly illustrates the patterns of legal extortion underlying the current fabric of interest-group politics.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Addition To Tullock's Work On Rent Seeking.......2001-10-03
Fred McChesney's book "Money For Nothing" builds upon public choice economist Gordon Tullock's work on how lobbyists obtain economic benefits from politicians. While Tullock's theory - known as "rent-seeking" - is gaining mainstream appeal, many economists now offer similar explanations for other aspects of legislative behavior that aids some interest groups while harming others. McChesney's theory of "rent-extraction" breaks new ground not yet covered by these economists.
McChesney defines rent extraction as "the political practice of extorting payments from private parties by making threats to expropriate wealth." In other words, he claims that politicians can take money from citizens by threatening to harm them and accepting bribes in the form of campaign contributions to leave them alone. He points out that if individuals have accumulated wealth and wish to keep it away from the government, they will be willing to pay politicians to leave them alone until the costs of doing so exceed the benefits of doing so.
Therefore, while Tullock's theory involves politicians accepting payments to create political favors in the form of rents, McChesney's involves politicians accepting payments to avoid destroying existing private rents. He explains the differences between the two by stating: "With the former (rent-creation/bribery), the beneficiaries of political action compensate the politician for increasing their welfare. With the latter (rent extraction/extortion), persons whose welfare would otherwise be diminished by political action compensate the politician for not effectuating that diminution."
He does point out that constitutional protection of private property and freedom of contract can prevent politicians from acting upon their threats. However, he claims the erosion of these protections has made the problem much more severe during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
To support his view that rent extraction imposes enormous costs on the economy, McChesney provides a wealth of evidence from recent policy debates. For example, he cites the United States Federal Trade Commission's efforts - at the request of Congress - to impose warranty and defect disclosure requirements on used car dealers as an attempt by individual members of Congress to obtain campaign contributions in exchange for voiding the rules. In this instance, he provides statistics on contributions made by the National Auto Dealers' Association to members of Congress who voted to repeal the regulations. In discussing the Supreme Court's response to the wheeling and dealing, he points out that the dealers were essentially tricked into paying to repeal legislation that Congress never intended to enact anyway.
On the Clinton health care plan, he states that stock prices of pharmaceutical firms began to fall before the policy was formally proposed. He emphasizes that investors knew that once price controls became an issue, the firms involved would have to spend money fighting the legislation by making campaign contributions. Thus, the firms were expected to lose enormous sums of money whether or not the bill was actually passed. Most importantly, he points out that the firms were never able to recover any of the money they lost in the process.
In addition to legislative threats to impose price caps, he cites situations in which politicians threaten to repeal existing price caps to obtain contributions. For example, he states that proposals to raise admission fees at Yellowstone National Park have met with resistance from local merchants and users who benefit from lower prices. In other words, politicians can even threaten regulatory systems that they inherited from previous regimes in order to extract contributions from the firms that benefit from those systems.
McChesney relates his theory to law and economics by applying the Coase Theorem to his logic. He claims that, in a world without transaction costs, there would be no regulation because markets would allocate goods to their highest bidders. Therefore, in his model, the existence of regulation is treated as a political market failure in which private individuals fail to accurately appraise the credibility of threats made by politicians.
McChesney offers a simple, straightforward way to make sense of much of the regulatory excess observed throughout the economy. Although his treatment of tax code reform may require some clarification, his model will eventually enjoy the same mainstream appeal that has been afforded to Tullock's over time.
Keen and Original Analysis.......1999-07-17
Fred McChesney here develops his original idea of rent extraction -- and it's an idea that renders understandable much of what the government does. (Want to know why the NRA and politicians perform a perpetual, public dance with each other? Read this book. McChesney's explanation will surprise you.) This book is a marvelous example of the best in public-choice scholarship: clearly written and cogent.
A must read for those interested in the way politicians work.......1998-03-15
What motivates politicians? How do they act? If you are interested in those questions your should read this. The author starts from earlier work in the area by Stigler and Posner - but then extends their models in a number of areas. McChesney has a remarkable ability to take a complex area of economics (public choice) and write in an interesting and understandable fashion. This book is probably going to be read mostly by academics but deserves a wider audience.
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