Awesome Confrontational Album and Music Offers

Those who associate ceramics with functional vessels or charming knick-knacks are in for a shock. Clay may start out soft, but in the right hands it can deliver a hard blow. From British Toby Jugs to Marcel Duchamp's Fountain to a wall of gruesome tiles that forms a portrait of President George W. Bush, ceramic art has the power to provoke and subvert.

Confrontational Ceramics surveys the work of contemporary sculptors, potters, and mixed media artists who have turned the ancient medium of clay into an articulate vehicle for political and social commentary. Educator and curator Judith S. Schwartz gathers the works of more than two hundred artists from thirty different countries into a glossy full-color overview of the radical ceramics scene. Provocative pieces from makers such as Grayson Perry, Robert Arneson, Richard Notkin, Howard Kottler, as well as newer talents, address personal, social, and geopolitical injustices from rape to racism. In their own words, these bold artists discuss the outrage behind their outrageous works. Schwartz provides historical context for current and late twentieth-century protest in the form of ceramics. She also places the artists within thematic groupings: war and politics, the social and human condition, gender issues, the environment, and popular and material culture.

Filled with subtle satire, garish jests, grotesque shock treatments, and moving testaments, Confrontational Ceramics is a radical departure from conventional coffee-table ceramics books on decorative housewares or formal abstractions. This art book will amuse, inspire, and possibly offend art historians, ceramics collectors, and anyone with an eye for the outlandish.

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Price: $34.65 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This survey of the foreign relations of the great powers is essentially a straightforward diplomatic history: an attempt to describe how statesmen conducted foreign policy, how they dealt with crisis situations, and how they succeeded or failed to resolve them..
Price: $57.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Now updated: Geoffrey Nunberg's "shrewd" and "valuable" guide to the way we speak and what this tells us about ourselves and the world we live in (Washington Post Book world)

Going Nucular is Geoff Nunberg's brilliant and witty look at what language reveals about our changing attitudes. Nunberg pronounces blog "a syllable whose time has come," and of Google he says: "You don't get to be a verb unless you're doing something right." Above all, he shows how the important issues of our times can be illuminated by the smallest linguistic cues, if you know how to listen for them. Nunberg explains why conservatives use "and" more than liberals do, and why the way the President says "nuclear" is something more than a simple mispronunciation-"a thinko, not a typo." Listening to the rhetoric of "values" in the 2004 presidential campaign, he traces how "a word that ought to be a bland political bromide has turned into a battle cry for both sides." Nunberg has dazzling receptors, perfect acoustics and a deftly elegant style..
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"Whether he’s in a dingy fluorescent basement or a beautiful sunlit forest, LaMarca always manages to finesse something amazing " (Paul Moakley, Newsweek)
Controversy erupted in March 2005 when, with the blessing of the Bush administration, logging companies began sawing into old growth reserves (sections of the federal forestland set aside for threatened wildlife). Two months later, the administration fanned the flames by repealing the 2001 "roadless rule," which protected 58 million acres of pristine roadless wildlands on the National Forests across the country. The states of Oregon, Washington, California, and New Mexico filed suit against the Bush administration for violating federal environmental law. The Forest Defenders responded as well.
These activists, labeled "radicals" and even "eco-terrorists" by the timber industry, are fighting to save some of the last truly wild places left in America. For the past five years, Christopher LaMarca has been documenting these much-maligned advocates who are willing to sacrifice their comforts and freedoms to stand up for wildlands. Forest Defenders: The Confrontational American Landscape offers insight into the lives of these extremely dedicated, politically sophisticated, and well-organized environmental activists..
Price: $9.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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What would happen if everyone in your company followed a disciplined approach to cost reduction? How can it be done? With smart cost management Two powerful strategies-target costing and value engineering-will get you well on your way. You will find both in this comprehensive book, the first in a series guaranteed to increase your profits. Effective cost management must start at the design stage. As much as 90-95% of a product's costs are designed in, meaning they cannot be avoided without re-designing. That is why effective cost management programs focus on design and manufacturing. The primary cost management method to control cost during design is a combination of target costing and value engineering..
Price: $19.51 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Provides an examination of how strategic cost management can drive profits, motivate behavior and keep an organization on target. DLC: Cost control .
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Critically lauded Buffalo humor writer Tom Waters sharpens his craft with essays to razor precision in his fourth published collection of wickedly subversive and laugh out loud rants, essays, and celebrity interviews. The author reloads his calculated wit on topics like babies, pornography, restaurants, relationships, driving, wrestling, coffee addiction, weight gain, psychotherapy, writers portrayed in film, the eroding laziness of our culture, drive-thrus, cooking, republicans, and the agony of shopping for clothes with women. The collection also reprints some of Tom's most popular celebrity interviews with author Bret Easton Ellis, comic legends Mike Carey and Brian Azzarello and cult film director Lloyd Kaufman. Waters has enjoyed a rabid cult following among his fans and continues to shock, amuse, and offend with his no-nonsense brand of confrontational rants. Compared as a cross between Andy Rooney, Dennis Miller and Denis Leary, his angst-fueled nonfiction endures as a legacy to the Y generation, an amusing threat to baby boomers, and an inspiration to angry young men the world over. His books and articles have appeared in over four countries and have thus far sold thousands of copies. He's performed his work on the radio, on stage, and in print for almost twenty years, garnering an award for humor from Columbia University and finding publication in The Buffalo News, ArtVoice, Night Life Magazine, Acid Logic, Film Fax, Too Much Coffee Man Magazine, and The Circle, among others. His last collection, First Person, Last Straw, was described as 'a jolting read' (Anthony Violanti, Buffalo News) and 'a book that gives as much as it takes from you' (Brian Bogucki, ArtVoice)..
Price: $12.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]