An Economy of Abundant Beauty

An Economy of Abundant Beauty PDF Author: Michael Augspurger
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801442049
Category : American periodicals
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
"We have made a breakthrough from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance," Henry Luce noted more than twenty years after founding Fortune magazine. "Can we make the breakthrough from an economy of abundance to an economy of abundant beauty?" Michael Augspurger's attractively illustrated book examines Fortune's surprising role in American struggles over artistic and cultural authority during the Depression and the Second World War. The elegantly designed magazine, launched in the first months of the Depression, was not narrowly concerned with moneymaking and finance. Indeed the magazine displayed a remarkable interest in art, national culture, and the "literature of business." Fortune's investment in art was not simply an attempt to increase the social status of business. It was, Augspurger argues, an expression of the editors' sincere desire to develop a moral capitalism. Optimistically believing that the United States had entered a new economic era, the liberal business minds behind Fortune demanded that material progress be translated into widespread leisure and artistic growth. A thriving national culture, the magazine believed, was as crucial a sign of economic success as material abundance and technological progress. But even as the "enlightened" business ideology of Fortune grew into the economic common sense of the 1950s, the author maintains, the magazine's cultural ideals struggled with and eventually succumbed to the professional criticism of the postwar era.

An Economy of Abundant Beauty

An Economy of Abundant Beauty PDF Author: Michael Augspurger
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801442049
Category : American periodicals
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
"We have made a breakthrough from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance," Henry Luce noted more than twenty years after founding Fortune magazine. "Can we make the breakthrough from an economy of abundance to an economy of abundant beauty?" Michael Augspurger's attractively illustrated book examines Fortune's surprising role in American struggles over artistic and cultural authority during the Depression and the Second World War. The elegantly designed magazine, launched in the first months of the Depression, was not narrowly concerned with moneymaking and finance. Indeed the magazine displayed a remarkable interest in art, national culture, and the "literature of business." Fortune's investment in art was not simply an attempt to increase the social status of business. It was, Augspurger argues, an expression of the editors' sincere desire to develop a moral capitalism. Optimistically believing that the United States had entered a new economic era, the liberal business minds behind Fortune demanded that material progress be translated into widespread leisure and artistic growth. A thriving national culture, the magazine believed, was as crucial a sign of economic success as material abundance and technological progress. But even as the "enlightened" business ideology of Fortune grew into the economic common sense of the 1950s, the author maintains, the magazine's cultural ideals struggled with and eventually succumbed to the professional criticism of the postwar era.

Depletion and Abundance

Depletion and Abundance PDF Author: Sharon Astyk
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 0865716145
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Climate change, peak oil and economic instability aren't just future social problems -- they jeopardize our homes and families right now. Our once-abundant food supply is being threatened by toxic chemical agriculture, rising food prices and crop shortages brought on by climate change. Funding for education and health care is strained to the limit, and safe and affordable housing is disappearing. Depletion and Abundance explains how we are living beyond our means with or without a peak oil/climate change crisis and that, either way, we must learn to place our families and local communities at the center of our thinking once again. The author presents strategies to create stronger homes, better health and a richer family life and to live comfortably with an uncertain energy supply prepare children for a hotter, lower energy, less secure world survive and thrive in an economy in crisis, and maintain a kitchen garden to supply basic food needs. Most importantly, readers will discover that depletion can lead to abundance, and the anxiety of these uncertain times can be turned into a gift of hope and action. An unusual family perspective on the topic, this book will appeal to all those interested in securing a future for their children and grandchildren.

The Economics of Abundance

The Economics of Abundance PDF Author: Dr Wolfgang Hoeschele
Publisher: Gower Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409459543
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
No matter how many resources we consume we never seem to have enough. The Economics of Abundance is a balanced book in which Wolfgang Hoeschele challenges why this is so. He claims that our current capitalist economy can exist only on the basis of manufactured scarcity created by 'scarcity-generating institutions', and these institutions manipulate both demand and supply of commodities. Therefore demand consistently exceeds supply, and profits and economic growth can continue – at the cost of individual freedom, social equity, and ecological sustainability. The fact that continual increases in demand are so vital to our economy leads to an impasse: many people see no alternative to the generation of ever more demand, but at the same time recognize that it is clearly unsustainable ecologically and socially. So, can demand only be reduced by curtailing freedom and is this acceptable? This book argues that, by analyzing how scarcity-generating institutions work and then reforming or dismantling them, we can enhance individual freedom and support entrepreneurial initiative, and at the same time make progress toward social justice and environmental sustainability by reducing demands on vital resources. This vision would enable activists in many fields (social justice, civil liberties, and environmental protection), as well as many entrepreneurs and other members of civil society to work together much more effectively, make it more difficult to portray all these groups as contradictory special interests, and thereby help generate momentum for positive change. Meanwhile, for academics in many fields of study, the concept of the creation of scarcity or abundance may be a highly useful analytical tool.

The Watchdog That Didn't Bark

The Watchdog That Didn't Bark PDF Author: Dean Starkman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231536283
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter details “how the U.S. business press could miss the most important economic implosion of the past eighty years” (Eric Alterman, media columnist for The Nation). In this sweeping, incisive post-mortem, Dean Starkman exposes the critical shortcomings that softened coverage in the business press during the mortgage era and the years leading up to the financial collapse of 2008. He examines the deep cultural and structural shifts—some unavoidable, some self-inflicted—that eroded journalism’s appetite for its role as watchdog. The result was a deafening silence about systemic corruption in the financial industry. Tragically, this silence grew only more profound as the mortgage madness reached its terrible apogee from 2004 through 2006. Starkman frames his analysis in a broad argument about journalism itself, dividing the profession into two competing approaches—access reporting and accountability reporting—which rely on entirely different sources and produce radically different representations of reality. As Starkman explains, access journalism came to dominate business reporting in the 1990s, a process he calls “CNBCization,” and rather than examining risky, even corrupt, corporate behavior, mainstream reporters focused on profiling executives and informing investors. Starkman concludes with a critique of the digital-news ideology and corporate influence, which threaten to further undermine investigative reporting, and he shows how financial coverage, and journalism as a whole, can reclaim its bite. “Can stand as a potentially enduring case study of what went wrong and why.”—Alec Klein, national bestselling author of Aftermath “With detailed statistics, Starkman provides keen analysis of how the media failed in its mission at a crucial time for the U.S. economy.”—Booklist

Life Abundant

Life Abundant PDF Author: Sallie McFague
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451417999
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
In this splendidly crafted work, McFague argues for theology as an ethical imperative for all thinking Christians. It can help Christians assess their own religious story in light of the larger Christian tradition and the felt needs of the planet. She shows readers how articulating their personal religious stories and credos can lead directly into contextual analysis, unfolding of theological concepts, and forms of Christian practice.

Abundance

Abundance PDF Author: Peter H. Diamandis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 145161683X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
The authors document how four forces--exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion--are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. "Abundance" establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.

The Enchantments of Mammon

The Enchantments of Mammon PDF Author: Eugene McCarraher
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674242777
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 817

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Book Description
“An extraordinary work of intellectual history as well as a scholarly tour de force, a bracing polemic, and a work of Christian prophecy...McCarraher challenges more than 200 years of post-Enlightenment assumptions about the way we live and work.” —The Observer At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the “disenchantment” of the world, stripping material objects and social relations of their mystery and magic. In this magisterial work, Eugene McCarraher challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether one is prepared to acknowledge it or not. First flowering in the fields and factories of England and brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals, whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit, capitalism has become so thoroughly enmeshed in the fabric of our society that our faith in “the market” has become sacrosanct. Informed by cultural history and theology as well as management theory, The Enchantments of Mammon looks to nineteenth-century Romantics, whose vision of labor combined reason, creativity, and mutual aid, for salvation. In this impassioned challenge to some of our most firmly held assumptions, McCarraher argues that capitalism has hijacked our intrinsic longing for divinity—and urges us to break its hold on our souls. “A majestic achievement...It is a work of great moral and spiritual intelligence, and one that invites contemplation about things we can’t afford not to care about deeply.” —Commonweal “More brilliant, more capacious, and more entertaining, page by page, than his most ardent fans dared hope. The magnitude of his accomplishment—an account of American capitalism as a religion...will stun even skeptical readers.” —Christian Century

New Critical Essays on James Agee and Walker Evans

New Critical Essays on James Agee and Walker Evans PDF Author: C. Blinder
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230111866
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
Coinciding with the increasing intersections between visual and literary studies, this timely reappraisal of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men sheds light on the book's unclassifiable status as part imaginative fiction, documentary effort, ethnographic study, and modernist prose.

The Short American Century

The Short American Century PDF Author: Andrew J. Bacevich
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674064747
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
In February 1941, Henry Luce announced the arrival of “The American Century.” But that century—extending from World War II to the recent economic collapse—has now ended, victim of strategic miscalculation, military misadventures, and economic decline. Here some of America’s most distinguished historians place the century in historical perspective.

Corporate Patronage of Art and Architecture in the United States, Late 19th Century to the Present

Corporate Patronage of Art and Architecture in the United States, Late 19th Century to the Present PDF Author: Monica E. Jovanovich
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501343742
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary collection of case studies rethinks corporate patronage in the United States and reveals the central role corporations have played in shaping American culture. This volume offers new methodologies and models for the subject of corporate patronage, and contains an extensive bibliography on corporate patronage, art collections and exhibitions, sponsorship, and philanthropy in the United States. The case studies herein go beyond the usual focus on corporate sponsorship and collecting to explore the complex organizational networks and motivations behind corporate commissions. Featuring chapters on Margaret Bourke-White, Julie Mehretu, Maxfield Parrish, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Eugene Savage, Millard Sheets, and Kehinde Wiley, as well as studies on Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, John D. Rockefeller Sr. and Jr., and Dorothy Shaver, and companies such as Herman Miller and Lord and Taylor, this volume looks at a wide array of works, ranging from sculpture, photography, mosaics, and murals to advertisements, department store displays, sportswear, medical schools, and public libraries.