An insider's view of the investment banking world from someone who is actually shaping it Powerful, controversial and determined, Thomas Weisel is known for his unwavering focus on winning the race, whether he is competing in a national cycling championship, sponsoring Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong or negotiating with business competitors. For twenty-seven years he ran one of the major investment banks on the West Coast, bringing public companies such as Applied Materials, Siebel Systems and Yahoo! and was instrumental in establishing San Francisco as an alternative financial center to Wall Street. In 1997 he sold his company to NationsBank, which later merged with Bank of America. Unhappy with his treatment after the merger, Weisel trumped Bank of America by negotiating a separation package that included $500 million in stock options and the ability to hire away crucial Bank of America management. Within two years, the investment bank he started, Thomas Weisel Partners, reached half a billion dollars in revenues and negotiated high-profile deals such as Yahoo!'s merger with Geocities. Power Investor weaves Weisel's approach to success, his competitive nature and love of cycling into a fascinating inside account of the cutthroat world of investment banking. Thomas Weisel (San Francisco, CA) is the founder, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Thomas Weisel Partners, a research-driven merchant bank exclusively focused on the growth sectors of the U.S. economy. He is founder and president of Tailwind Sports, which manages the U.S. Postal Service cycling team, and was an Olympic-class speed skater and the former chairman of the U.S. Ski Foundation. Richard Brandt (San Francisco, CA) has twenty years' experience as a leading business journalist. He was a senior reporter for BusinessWeek for fourteen years and editor in chief of the technology business magazine Upside for four years.

Affectivity and the Social Bond offers a fresh and original perspective on the relationship between affectivity and transcendence in nineteenth and twentieth century French social theory. Engaging in a conceptual analysis of the works of Comte, Durkheim, Bataille and Girard, this book exposes a major transformation brought about by the sociological gaze in understandings of affectivity and its relationship to both sociality and transcendence in nineteenth century social thought: the ambivalence between the transcendence of the social and the immanence of affective experience. Revealing the manner in which questions of violence and economy are intertwined in the sociological analysis of affectivity, Affectivity and the Social Bond reflects upon the problem of controlling affectivity, alongside the political implications and possible dangers of a sociological model which seeks the roots of the social bond first and foremost in the affective realm. A rigorous engagement with the classics of French social theory, their treatment of human affectivity and its relationship to social integration and regulation, this book will appeal not only to sociologists and social theorists, but also to those with interests in social and political philosophy and the history of ideas.

Doping is as old as organized sports. From baseball to horse racing, cycling to track and field, drugs have been used to enhance performance for 150 years. For much of that time, doping to do better was expected. It was doping to throw a game that stirred outrage. Today, though, athletes are vilified for using performance-enhancing drugs. Damned as moral deviants who shred the fair-play fabric, dopers are an affront to the athletes who don’t take shortcuts. But this tidy view swindles sports fans. While we may want the world sorted into villains and victims, putting the blame on athletes alone ignores decades of history in which teams, coaches, governments, the media, scientists, sponsors, sports federations, and even spectators have played a role. The truth about doping in sports is messy and shocking because it holds a mirror to our own reluctance to spit in the soupthat is, to tell the truth about the spectacle we crave. In Spitting in the Soup, sports journalist Mark Johnson explores how the deals made behind closed doors keep drugs in sports. Johnson unwinds the doping culture from the early days, when pills meant progress, and uncovers the complex relationships that underlie elite sports culturethe essence of which is not to play fair but to push the boundaries of human performance. It’s easy to assume that drugs in sports have always been frowned upon, but that’s not true. Drugs in sports are old. It’s banning drugs in sports that is new. Spitting in the Soup offers a bitingly honest, clear-eyed look at why that’s so, and what it will take to kick pills out of the locker room once and for all.