Tells the disastrous story of the design and development of the Edsel, with insights into this spectacular failure of the automobile industry to sell a car that it had marketed extensively.

The Cadillac story is more than the story of a car company. It is, in many ways, the story of the American automobile industry itself—which, as much as any industry, drove America’s growth in the twentieth century and defined who we are as a people. For generations of Americans, Cadillac epitomized expansive prosperity. This illustrated history of Cadillac presents all the triumphs and failures of the marque’s last sixty years; from the good times, through the disastrous 1980s, and up to the current reconstitution of the brand.

If someone had told me years ago that I was going to write a book, I would have told them that they were crazy! For years I've been writing down my deepest thoughts and emotions with absolutely no plans of exposing them to the public. These writings act as short stories that chronicle my life's experiences. These testimonies are emotional, some of them are spiritual, some of them funny, some painful, and some of them even deal with life's lessons that I had to struggle with on my own. There would be times when my closest friends would share their secrets with me and because I felt deeply moved from what they shared, I would put myself in their shoes and try to find a better way of resolving the issue. Some of these encounters have even frustrated me so deeply, that I would have absolutely no choice but to write them down, just to get them off my chest. My purpose is to inspire, motivate and encourage those who want to make a difference or those who need another chance to make it right. Every occurrence has allowed me to grow and be stretched in directions beyond explanation. I enjoy writing poetry that every one can relate to. These are more then just some words scribbled down on paper. These are experiences and stories that I would like to share publicly. I understand that any artistic expression may be subject to scrutiny. This book is a reflection of me and anyone who can relate to it in some form or fashion. It's for those who believe in the power of words and their ability to teach, minister and heal.

Now considered a dysfunctional mess, Chicago’s public housing projects once had long waiting lists of would-be residents hoping to leave the slums behind. So what went wrong? To answer this complicated question, D. Bradford Hunt traces public housing’s history in Chicago from its New Deal roots through current mayor Richard M. Daley’s Plan for Transformation. In the process, he chronicles the Chicago Housing Authority’s own transformation from the city’s most progressive government agency to its largest slumlord. Challenging explanations that attribute the projects’ decline primarily to racial discrimination and real estate interests, Hunt argues that well-intentioned but misguided policy decisions—ranging from design choices to maintenance contracts—also paved the road to failure. Moreover, administrators who fully understood the potential drawbacks did not try to halt such deeply flawed projects as Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes. These massive high-rise complexes housed unprecedented numbers of children but relatively few adults, engendering disorder that pushed out the working class and, consequently, the rents needed to maintain the buildings. The resulting combination of fiscal crisis, managerial incompetence, and social unrest plunged the CHA into a quagmire from which it is still struggling to emerge. Blueprint for Disaster, then,is an urgent reminder of the havoc poorly conceived policy can wreak on our most vulnerable citizens.

What do consumers really want? In the mid-twentieth century, many marketing executives sought to answer this question by looking to the theories of Sigmund Freud and his followers. By the 1950s, Freudian psychology had become the adman's most powerful new tool, promising to plumb the depths of shoppers' subconscious minds to access the irrational desires beneath their buying decisions. That the unconscious was the key to consumer behavior was a new idea in the field of advertising, and its impact was felt beyond the commercial realm. Centered on the fascinating lives of the brilliant men and women who brought psychoanalytic theories and practices from Europe to Madison Avenue and, ultimately, to Main Street, Freud on Madison Avenue tells the story of how midcentury advertisers changed American culture. Paul Lazarsfeld, Herta Herzog, James Vicary, Alfred Politz, Pierre Martineau, and the father of motivation research, Viennese-trained psychologist Ernest Dichter, adapted techniques from sociology, anthropology, and psychology to help their clients market consumer goods. Many of these researchers had fled the Nazis in the 1930s, and their decidedly Continental and intellectual perspectives on secret desires and inner urges sent shockwaves through WASP-dominated postwar American culture and commerce. Though popular, these qualitative research and persuasion tactics were not without critics in their time. Some of the tools the motivation researchers introduced, such as the focus group, are still in use, with "consumer insights" and "account planning" direct descendants of Freudian psychological techniques. Looking back, author Lawrence R. Samuel implicates Dichter's positive spin on the pleasure principle in the hedonism of the Baby Boomer generation, and he connects the acceptance of psychoanalysis in marketing culture to the rise of therapeutic culture in the United States.

This fascinating book looks at some of the most horrifying and noteworthy disasters to have occurred around the world. More than 200 disasters involving aircraft, ships and trains as well as fires are analysed in detail, accompanied by 500 photographs. The entries, which are arranged chronologically, explain the background to each incident, the event itself, and the search for causes and culprits. The volume also contains a wide-ranging introduction, a bibliography, and a comprehensive index.

The Dallas Morning News had more staff photographers on the scene when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast at the end of August. These Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers caught every aspect of the storm and its aftermath on film and many of those photos will be seen for the first time in this excellent work of photojournalism.

Drawing upon oral history transcripts, archival correspondence, and unpublished family memoirs, independent scholar Baldwin describes Henry Ford's rabid anti-Semitism and the Jewish American community's response to him. Topics include Ford's hateful essays in The Dearborn Independent, his publication of treatises on the alleged international Jewish banking conspiracy, and his impact on the anti- Semitic movement in Europe in the years leading up to World War II. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Serendipity placed David Johnston on Mount St. Helens when the volcano rumbled to life in March 1980. Throughout that ominous spring, Johnston was part of a team conducting scientific research that underpinned warnings about the mountain. Those warnings saved thousands of lives when the most devastating volcanic eruption in U.S. history blew apart Mount St. Helens but killed Johnston on the ridge that now bears his name. Melanie Holmes tells the story of Johnston's journey from a nature-loving Boy Scout to a committed geologist. Blending science with personal detail, Holmes follows Johnston through his encounters with Aleutian volcanoes, his work helping the Portuguese government assess the geothermal power of the Azores, and his dream job as a volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Interviews and personal writings reveal what a friend called “the most unjaded person I ever met,” an imperfect but kind and intelligent young scientist passionately in love with his life and work and determined to make a difference.