Chris Edwards has gone from running a stall on Wakefield market to masterminding a single price shopping chain with more than 300 stores across the United Kingdom. The remarkable retail rise to fame of his Poundworld business was fascinatingly featured in 2015’s highly-rated BBC1 series, Pound Shop Wars - and while Chris opened up about his astonishing success story to the cameras, it was his eighty-eight-year-old mum Alice who truly became a cult figure. ‘I’ve always been driven by the fear of ending up skint!’ says Chris, who admits he once risked losing not only his own home, but also the houses of both his brother and business partner Laurie and of his own mum and dad on a single risky deal. Now, his frank and inspiring autobiography reveals the rise and rise of the businessman from hard-working one-man band with just a single van to high street tycoon with a fleet of huge lorries and more than 6,000 employees. And somehow along the way the sixty-five-year old Yorkshireman also built a thriving nightclub business with no fewer than nine venues. In 2015, Chris sold 75 per cent of Poundworld to American venture capitalists TPG for ?150million, but he is still in control and determined to drive Poundworld to new heights. This is the truly inspiring story of one man’s rise to the very top.

In 1998, Michael Parness was a struggling playwright and screenwriter who was leaving the stability of his successful sports memorabilia business to write full-time. Following the advice of a stockbroker, he invested his nest egg of $150,000. But the October 1998 crash gutted his portfolio by 80% and his stocks failed to recover. With virtually no income and no financial cushion, he found himself in a tiny low-rent apartment with time to think about what had happened, and, eventually, enact financial revenge. In January 1999, he opened an online brokerage account and set out to get his money back. And in fifteen months, Michael Parness turned $33,000 into seven million dollars, started the online trading website "Trend Fund" where thousands of traders Rule the Freakin' Markets with him, and had his life story optioned by a major Hollywood producer! In Rule the Freakin' Markets, Michael Parness uses visual aids combined with practice exercises to show online traders and investors how to: * Practice responsible trading techniques that maximize reward and limit risk * Avoid the "7 deadly sins plus fear" that block success in the market * Protect investments no matter what the market does * Understand how market psychology drives daily and cyclical market moves * Avoid the pitfalls of trading in cyberspace * Recover and learn from significant losses * Strategize and anticipate, rather than overreact or freeze when change occurs * And finally, live full and satisfying lives as traders With its lively tone and refreshing approach to trading and investing, Rule the Freakin' Markets is an essential guide for online traders and investors alike.

Contemporary Consumer Culture Theory contains original research essays written by the premier thought leaders of the discipline from around the world that reflect the maturation of the field Customer Culture Theory over the last decade. The volume seeks to help break down the silos that have arisen in disciplines seeking to understand consumer culture, and speed both the diffusion of ideas and possibility of collaboration across frontiers. Contemporary Consumer Culture Theory begins with a re-evaluation of some of the fundamental notions of consumer behaviour, such as self and other, branding and pricing, and individual vs. communal agency then continuing with a reconsideration of role configurations as they affect consumption, examining in particular the ramifications of familial, gender, ethnic and national aspects of consumers’ lived experiences. The book move on to a reappraisal of the state of the field, examining the rhetoric of inquiry, the reflexive history and critique of the discipline, the prospect of redirecting the effort of inquiry to practical and humanitarian ends, the neglected wellsprings of our intellectual heritage, and the ideological underpinnings of the evolving construction of the concept of the brand. Contemporary Consumer Culture Theory is a reflective assessment, in theoretical, empirical and evocative keys, of the state of the field of consumer culture theory and an indication of the scholarly directions in which the discipline is evolving providing reflection upon a rapidly expanding discipline and altered consumption-scapes by some of its prime movers.