Pearls, People, and Power is the first book to examine the trade, distribution, production, and consumption of pearls and mother-of-pearl in the global Indian Ocean over more than five centuries. While scholars have long recognized the importance of pearling to the social, cultural, and economic practices of both coastal and inland areas, the overwhelming majority have confined themselves to highly localized or at best regional studies of the pearl trade. By contrast, this book stresses how pearling and the exchange in pearl shell were interconnected processes that brought the ports, islands, and coasts into close relation with one another, creating dense networks of connectivity that were not necessarily circumscribed by local, regional, or indeed national frames. Essays from a variety of disciplines address the role of slaves and indentured workers in maritime labor arrangements, systems of bondage and transoceanic migration, the impact of European imperialism on regional and local communities, commodity flows and networks of exchange, and patterns of marine resource exploitation between the Industrial Revolution and Great Depression. By encompassing the geographical, cultural, and thematic diversity of Indian Ocean pearling, Pearls, People, and Power deepens our appreciation of the underlying historical dynamics of the many worlds of the Indian Ocean. Contributors: Robert Carter, William G. Clarence-Smith, Joseph Christensen, Matthew S. Hopper, Pedro Machado, Julia T. Martínez, Michael McCarthy, Jonathan Miran, Steve Mullins, Karl Neuenfeldt, Samuel M. Ostroff, and James Francis Warren.

Pearls, Politics, and Power is a call to action for new political engagement and leadership from the women of America. Informed by conversations with elected women leaders from all levels, former three-term Vermont Governor and Ambassador to Switzerland Madeleine M. Kunin asks: What difference do women make? What is the worst part of politics, and what is the best part? What inspired these women to run, and how did they prepare themselves for public life? How did they raise money, protect their families' privacy, deal with criticism and attack ads, and work with the good old boys? Kunin's core message is that America needs an infusion of new leadership to better address the major problems of our time. To see how women can achieve that goal, she combines her personal experience in politics; the lessons of past women's movements; the stories of young women today who have new ideas about their role in society; and interviews with a wide range of women in positions of power, looking for clues to their leadership, as well as the effects of gender stereotyping. She interviews Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, analyzes her campaign, and addresses the question: "Is the country ready?" Other interviewees include U.S. Representatives Loretta Sanchez, Linda Sanchez, Deborah Pryce, and Tammy Baldwin, and U.S. Senators Susan Collins, Amy Klobuchar, and Carol Moseley Braun, and Governors Kathleen Sibelius and Janet Napolitano. The next generation of women will be inspired to lead by seeing women like Nancy Pelosi wielding the gavel, and seeing themselves reflected in the portraits in statehouses, courthouses, corporate and university boardrooms, and the White House. Pearls, Politics, and Power will help ensure that this inspiration is not soured or deflected, but channeled into successful candidacies by America's leaders of tomorrow. What will it take for women to assume their rightful places in the political corridors of power?

Pearls of Power reviews the social science that explains our implicit, instinctual appraisal of people, and how these subliminal automatic appraisals influences choices in elections and in the workplace in the selection of leaders. This book focuses on a limited but critical aspect of leadership – how to get the role. It is not a book on leadership skills, but rather on how to look that part, as this is essential for gaining access to leadership roles. Citing hundreds of hundreds scientific studies, Dr. Lewis explains how subtle characteristics in the candidate’s appearance affect voter behavior sufficiently to move election results by several percentage points; enough to swing most competitive elections. These same characteristics influence how we are perceived in the workplace and greatly impact hiring and promotion into leadership roles. Pearls of Power then outlines the steps a candidate can take to improve the way they are perceived by others, and how to make subtle changes in their appearance that increase the perception of competence, capacity and strength. Since most voters never meet the candidate, photos have a crucial influence on elections. Pearls of Power describes how to different camera lenses, lighting, and camera angle can change how we are perceived, and how different persons can highlight or minimize aspects of their appearance to best present themselves. Although any political or job candidate may benefit from the advice provided in Pearls of Power, it is written with women in mind. There are chapters on how to use of cosmetics, jewelry, accessories, and on hair and clothing styles that best present the candidate. The book provides guidance on how the candidate can best present themselves when interviewed on radio or television, and gives advice on what not to wear on live camera. Pearls of Power councils the reader on how they can develop a persona with executive presence so that others perceive them as leaders, in order to give the reader a greater voice and more powerful role, both in society and in their careers.

A detailed study of the origins and demise of schooner-based pearling in Australia For most of its history, Australian pearling was a shore-based activity. But from the mid-1880s until the World War I era, the industry was dominated by highly mobile, heavily capitalized, schooner-based fleets of pearling luggers, known as floating stations, that exploited Australia’s northern continental shelf and the nearby waters of the Netherlands Indies. Octopus Crowd: Maritime History and the Business of Australian Pearling in Its Schooner Age is the first book-length study of schooner-based pearling and explores the floating station system and the men who developed and employed it. Steve Mullins focuses on the Clark Combination, a syndicate led by James Clark, Australia’s most influential pearler. The combination honed the floating station system to the point where it was accused of exhausting pearling grounds, elbowing out small-time operators, strangling the economies of pearling ports, and bringing the industry to the brink of disaster. Combination partners were vilified as monopolists—they were referred to as an “octopus crowd”—and their schooners were stigmatized as hell ships and floating sweatshops. Schooner-based floating stations crossed maritime frontiers with impunity, testing colonial and national territorial jurisdictions. The Clark Combination passed through four fisheries management regimes, triggering significant change and causing governments to alter laws and extend maritime boundaries. It drew labor from ports across the Asia-Pacific, and its product competed in a volatile world market. Octopus Crowd takes all of these factors into account to explain Australian pearling during its schooner age. It argues that the demise of the floating station system was not caused by resource depletion, as was often predicted, but by ideology and Australia’s shifting sociopolitical landscape

An essential guide for every woman who wants to build, preserve, and enjoy her wealth in a world where the old sequential patterns of education, marriage, motherhood, and retirement no longer apply.

From their creation in the maw of mollusks to lustrous objects of infatuation and conflict, a revealing look at pearls’ dark history. This book is a beautifully illustrated account of pearls through millennia, from fossils to contemporary jewelry. Pearls are the most human of gems, both miraculous and familiar. Uniquely organic in origin, they are as intimate as our bodies, created through the same process as we grow bones and teeth. They have long been described as an animal’s sacrifice, but until recently their retrieval often entailed the sacrifices of enslaved and indentured divers and laborers. While the shimmer of the pearl has enticed Roman noblewomen, Mughal princes, Hollywood royalty, mavericks, and renegades, encoded in its surface is a history of human endeavor, abuse, and aspiration—pain locked in the layers of a gleaming gem.

One Gemstone, in reality, is a piece of a mineral. It is either a piece of a mineral, non-organic, or inorganic substance. After cutting and polishing, the Gemstone is used for making precious stones and other adornments. However certain Gems like lapis lazuli, amber, pearls, etc. are not minerals but they are used for the manufacturing of jewelry, these are called organic or carbonic Gemstones. Gemstones are both hard and soft. The luster, rarity, and other physical properties, accordingly create the value of the Gemstones. In general, people know only nine Gemstones, but in reality, in this world, there are more than 2000 varieties of Gemstones.

A modern day Beauty and the Beast tale about a white skinned pearl in a world of dark skinned coals.

This book discusses the current trends in luxury and jewelry and presents how to make these sustainable for a better future. In the age of sustainability, we increasingly see how designers and consumers begin to think beyond a product's look&feel and operation, and are especially concerned about what has happened during its manufacturing process and what will happen once its useful life comes to an end. Today, consumers value that every industrial product and process should be sustainable, beneficial for the people, the economy and the planet, and so is the case for jewelry.

This book enhances our understanding of the exquisitely beautiful, fourteenth-century, Middle English dream vision poem Pearl. Situating the study in the contexts of medieval literary criticism and contemporary genre theory, Beal argues that the poet intended Pearl to be read at four levels of meaning and in four corresponding genres: literally, an elegy; spiritually, an allegory; morally, a consolation; and anagogically, a revelation. The book addresses cruxes and scholarly debates about the poem’s genre and meaning, including key questions that have been unresolved in Pearl studies for over a century: * What is the nature of the relationship between the Dreamer and the Maiden? * What is the significance of allusions to Ovidian love stories and the use of liturgical time in the poem? * How does avian symbolism, like that of the central symbol of the pearl, develop, transform, and add meaning throughout the dream vision? * What is the nature of God portrayed in the poem, and how does the portrayal of the Maiden’s intimate relationship to God, her spiritual marriage to the Lamb, connect to the poet’s purpose in writing? Noting that the poem is open to many interpretations, Beal also considers folktale genre patterns in Pearl, including those drawn from parable, fable, and fairy-tale. The conclusion considers Pearl in the light of modern psychological theories of grieving and trauma. This book makes a compelling case for re-reading Pearl and recognizing the poem’s signifying power. Given the ongoing possibility of new interpretations, it will appeal to those who specialize in Pearl as well as scholars of Middle English, Medieval Literature, Genre Theory, and Literature and Religion.