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Springer Handbook of Optical Networks (Springer Handbooks)
by Ioannis Tomkos Massimo Tornatore Yongli Zhao Biswanath Mukherjee Peter WinzerThis handbook is an authoritative, comprehensive reference on optical networks, the backbone of today’s communication and information society. The book reviews the many underlying technologies that enable the global optical communications infrastructure, but also explains current research trends targeted towards continued capacity scaling and enhanced networking flexibility in support of an unabated traffic growth fueled by ever-emerging new applications. The book is divided into four parts: Optical Subsystems for Transmission and Switching, Core Networks, Datacenter and Super-Computer Networking, and Optical Access and Wireless Networks. Each chapter is written by world-renown experts that represent academia, industry, and international government and regulatory agencies. Every chapter provides a complete picture of its field, from entry-level information to a snapshot of the respective state-of-the-art technologies to emerging research trends, providing something useful for the novice who wants to get familiar with the field to the expert who wants to get a concise view of future trends.
Springer Handbook of Speech Processing
by M. M. Sondhi Jacob Benesty Yiteng HuangThis handbook plays a fundamental role in sustainable progress in speech research and development. With an accessible format and with accompanying DVD-Rom, it targets three categories of readers: graduate students, professors and active researchers in academia, and engineers in industry who need to understand or implement some specific algorithms for their speech-related products. It is a superb source of application-oriented, authoritative and comprehensive information about these technologies, this work combines the established knowledge derived from research in such fast evolving disciplines as Signal Processing and Communications, Acoustics, Computer Science and Linguistics.
Stacked Antennas: Design, Analysis and Applications
by Ananjan Basu Ankita MalhotraThe text focuses primarily on details related to design concepts of stacked microstrip antennas, performance characteristics, and complete static analysis based on different approaches. It will further provide readers with an in-depth understanding of static analysis approaches for analyzing and understanding the performance of multi-layered stacked antennas. The book covers important topics such as conformal mapping, the transmission-line equivalent model-based approach, and the microstrip patch antenna model. The book also discusses reconfigurable stacked microstrip antennas, stacked microstrip antenna arrays, and a wide range of potential applications of stacked microstrip antennas.This book: Presents systematic and simplified design steps of stacked antennas, the factors involved, and various design examples and explains static analysis of multi-layered stacked antennas in an easy-to-understand manner. Discusses topics such as conformal mapping, the transmission-line equivalent model-based approach, and the microstrip patch antenna model and reconfigurable stacked microstrip antennas and their applications, along with briefly discussing the design concepts of stacked microstrip antenna arrays. Covers simulation, design concepts, and measurement techniques for stacked microstrip antennas. Illustrates microstrip stacked antenna parameters, including bandwidth, polarization, radiation pattern, gain, directivity, and efficiency. Focuses on covering a wide range of potential applications of stacked microstrip antennas. It is primarily written for senior undergraduates, graduate students, and academic researchers in fields including electrical engineering, electronics, and communications engineering.
Stage Fright: 40 Stars Tell You How They Beat America's #1 Fear
by Mick Berry Michael EdelsteinNever before has the problem of stage fright been so eloquently examined; 40 interviews with some of the most highly-accomplished public figures shed light on this affliction, offering tips from their own experiences for overcoming it. Jason Alexander, Mose Allison, Maya Angelou, David Brenner, Peter Coyote, Olympia Dukakis, Richard Lewis, and many more sound off about their trials with stage fright, candidly discussing their fears and insecurities with life in the public eye and ultimately revealing the various paths they followed to overcoming them. Stage fright sufferers from all walks of life--whether a high school freshman nervous about an oral presentation or a professional baseball player with the eyes of the world on his bat--will find consolation by understanding the commonality of their problem, as well as helpful information to finally shed their inhibitions.
Stages of Reckoning: Antiracist and Decolonial Actor Training (Routledge Series in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Theatre and Performance)
by Amy Mihyang GintherStages of Reckoning is a crucial conversation about how racialized bodies and power intersect within actor training spaces. This book provokes embodied and intellectual discomfort for the reader to take risks with their ideologies, identities, and practices and to make new pedagogical choices for students with racialized identities. Centering the voices of actor trainers of color to acknowledge their personal experience and professional pedagogy as theory, this volume illuminates actionable ideas for text work, casting, voice, consent practices, and movement while offering decolonial approaches to current Eurocentric methods. These offerings invite the reader to create spaces where students can bring more of themselves, their communities, and their stories into their training and as fodder for performance making that will lead to a more just world. This book is for people in high/secondary schools, higher education, and private training studios who wish to teach and direct actors of color in ways that more fully honor their multiple identities.
Staging Chinese Revolution: Theater, Film, and the Afterlives of Propaganda
by Xiaomei ChenStaging Chinese Revolution surveys fifty years of theatrical propaganda performances in China, revealing a dynamic, commercial capacity in works often dismissed as artifacts of censorship. Spanning the 1960s through the 2010s, Xiaomei Chen reads films, plays, operas, and television shows from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, demonstrating how, in a socialist state with "capitalist characteristics," propaganda performance turns biographies, memoirs, and war stories into mainstream ideological commodities, legitimizing the state and its right to rule. Analyzing propaganda performance also brings contradictions and inconsistencies to light that throw common understandings about propaganda's purpose into question.Chen focuses on revisionist histories that stage the lives of the "founding fathers" of the Communist Party, such as Chen Duxiu, Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping, and the engaging mix of elite and ordinary characters that animate official propaganda in the private and public sphere. Taking the form of "personal" memories and representing star and youth culture and cyberspace, contemporary Chinese propaganda appeals through multiple perspectives, complicating relations among self, subject, agent, state building, and national identity. Chen treats Chinese performance as an extended form of political theater confronting critical issues of commemoration, nostalgia, state rituals, and contested history. It is through these reenactments that three generations of revolutionary leaders loom in extraordinary ways over Chinese politics and culture.
Staging Christ's Passion in Eighteenth-Century Nahua Mexico (IMS Monograph Series)
by Louise M. BurkhartStaging Christ’s Passion in Eighteenth-Century Nahua Mexico explores the Passion plays performed in Nahuatl (Aztec) by Indigenous Mexicans living under Spanish colonial occupation. Though sourced from European writings and devotional practices that emphasized the suffering of Christ and his mother, this Nahuatl theatrical tradition grounded the Passion story in the Indigenous corporate community. Passion plays had courted controversy in Europe since their twelfth-century origin, but in New Spain they faced Catholic authorities who questioned the spiritual and intellectual capacity of Indigenous people and, in the eighteenth century, sought to suppress these performances. Six surviving eighteenth-century scripts, variants of an original play possibly composed early in the seventeenth century, reveal how Nahuas passed along this model text while modifying it with new dialogue, characters, and stage techniques. Louise M. Burkhart explores the way Nahuas merged the Passion story with their language, cultural constructs, social norms, and religious practices while also responding to surveillance by Catholic churchmen. Analytical chapters trace significant themes through the six plays and key these to a composite play in English included in the volume. A cast with over fifty distinct roles acted out events extending from Palm Sunday to Christ’s death on the cross. One actor became a localized embodiment of Jesus through a process of investiture and mimesis that carried aspects of pre-Columbian materialized divinity into the later colonial period. The play told afar richer version of the Passion story than what later colonial Nahuas typically learned from their priests or catechists. And by assimilating Jesus to an Indigenous, or macehualli, identity, the players enacted a protest against colonial rule. The situation in eighteenth-century New Spain presents both a unique confrontation between Indigenous communities and Enlightenment era religious reformers and a new chapter in an age-old power game between popular practice and religious orthodoxy. By focusing on how Nahuas localized the universalizing narrative of Christ’s Passion, Staging Christ’s Passion in Eighteenth-Century Nahua Mexico offers an unusually in-depth view of religious life under colonial rule. Burkhart’s accompanying website also makes available transcriptions and translations of the six Nahuatl-language plays, four Spanish-language plays composed in response to the suppression of the Nahuatl practice, and related documentation, providing a valuable resource for anyone interested in consulting the original material. Comments restricted to single page plays composed in response to the suppression of the Nahuatl practice, and related documentation, providing a valuable resource for anyone interested in consulting the original material
Staging and Performing Translation
by Roger Baines Cristina Marinetti Manuela PerteghellaStaging and Performing Translation: Text and Theatre Practice explores the territory between translation theory and practice in contemporary theatre. Featuring contributions by academics from theatre and translation studies, as well as translators, directors, actors, dramaturges and literary managers, and an interview with playwright-translator-adapter Christopher Hampton, this collection attempts to delineate a new space for the discussion of translation in the theatre that is international, critical and scholarly while rooted in experience and understanding of theatre practice. The volume will be of interest to academics, lecturers and postgraduate students working and researching in the fields of translation studies, performance studies, and drama and theatre studies. The book offers innovative approaches to both the translation of play-texts and research methodologies, providing a useful pedagogical tool for the development of theatre translation modules or courses. The practical nature of the contributions will also be of interest to actor-training institutions as well as theatre practitioners and cultural promoters.
Stakeholder Engagement Analyse: Eine Meso-Mikro-Makro-Analyse nachhaltigkeitsthemenorientierter Stakeholderkommunikation am Fallbeispiel Volkswagen AG (AutoUni – Schriftenreihe #153)
by Thomas LangAm Fallbeispiel der Volkswagen AG Nachhaltigkeit werden erstmalig auf der Grundlage eines sozialtheoretisch inspirierten Mehrebenen-Analysemodells die Wahrnehmungen und Zuschreibungen von Unternehmensverantwortung (Corporate Responsibility) durch 33 nichtmarktliche Stakeholder aus den drei Bezugsgruppen Wissenschaft und Forschung, Politik und Verbände sowie NGOs untersucht. Die qualitative Fallstudie beschreibt kenntnisreich und detailliert, wie der Volkswagen-Konzern mit seinen wesentlichen, nichtmarktlichen Stakeholdergruppen interagiert. Den theoretischen Bezugsrahmen der Arbeit bilden Anthony Giddens Theorie der Strukturation, Edward R. Freemans Stakeholder-Management- und Amartya Sens Capability-Ansatz.
Stakeholder Whispering: Uncover What People Need Before Doing What They Ask
by Bill ShanderLearn to uncover what your managers, clients, customers and other stakeholders need before doing what they ask People don't know what they need. The wants we communicate to others are shaped by our subconscious and the familiar, and limited by what we think is possible. But they don't always reflect our actual needs. In Stakeholder Whispering: Uncover What People Need Before Doing What They Ask, author Bill Shander demonstrates how to get from your stakeholders' "order"—what they're asking for—to what they really need. You'll learn how to uncover the needs and desires of your clients, colleagues, bosses, customers, and other stakeholders based on what they ask for and how they ask for it, and how to deliver products and services that meet those needs. Inside the book: Help your stakeholders accomplish their goals and make the best decisions possible by helping them see what they really need Shift from executing on tactics driven by others' commands, to strategic action driven by underlying needs Transform your organization from one filled with "order-takers" into one where people work collaboratively to meet goal-oriented requirements Perfect for managers, executives, and other business leaders, Stakeholder Whispering will also earn a place on the bookshelves of entrepreneurs, founders, designers, product and project managers, UX experts, data and business analysts, and anyone else hoping to better meet the expectations of their coworkers, managers, clients, and customers.
Stan Hochman Unfiltered: 50 Years of Wit and Wisdom from the Groundbreaking Sportswriter
by Gloria HochmanThe late Philadelphia Daily News sportswriter Stan Hochman was known for his many zingers, such as “Harry Litwack, the stoic Temple coach, stalks the sidelines like a blind man at a nudist colony.” As a reporter, he was more interested in how athletes felt, what their values were, how they lived their lives, or what made them tick than he was about how many runs they scored or punches they landed. In Stan Hochman Unfiltered, his wife Gloria collects nearly 100 of his best columns from the Daily News about baseball, horse racing, boxing, football, hockey, and basketball (both college and pro), as well as food, films, and even Liz Taylor. Each section is introduced by a friend or colleague, including Garry Maddox, Bernie Parent, Larry Merchant, and Ray Didinger, among others. Hochman penned a candid, cantankerous column about whether Pete Rose belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame; wrote a graphic account of the Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fight of the century; and skewered Norman “Bottom Line” Braman, the one-time owner of the Eagles. He also wrote human-interest stories, including features about the importance of kids with special needs playing sports. In addition to being a beloved writer, Hochman was also known for his stint on WIP’s radio as the Grand Imperial Poobah, where he would settle callers’ most pressing debates. Hochman long earned the respect and admiration of his subjects, peers, and readers throughout his career, and Stan Hochman Unfiltered is a testament to his enduring legacy.
Stand Out 5: Standards Based English
by Rob Jenkins Staci JohnsonBuilt from the standards necessary for adult English learners, the second edition of Stand Out gives students the foundation and tools they need to develop confidence and become independent, lifelong learners.
Stand Out: How to Build Your Leadership Presence
by Carol Kinsey GomanLeadership presence doesn't come with a title or promotion - good leaders develop presence over time. Leadership presence is how you show up and contribute to meetings, and whether or not you can project confidence and poise under pressure - do you have already have a presence?Leadership presence is that elusive "we know it when we see it" quality. You may have a leadership title or tremendous leadership potential, but that alone does not give you presence. Being perceived as a leader when interacting with customers, peers or executives is the essence of leadership presence. Your leadership presence is evaluated by others based on how you show up and contribute in meetings, how well you project confidence and keep poise under pressure and whether you can engage others in ways that are authentic, empathetic and motivational. Stand Out walks you through achieving this presence so you get that next promotion and give your career that extra boost. Stand Out explains that the goal of leadership presence is to align other people's impression of you with your best authentic self. Body language expert and executive coach Carol Kinsey Goman teaches the five essential skills needed: composure, connection, confidence, credibility and charisma. She also explains how leadership presence is different for women, how nonverbal communication builds or destroys presence and why self-promotion is essential. This book shows aspiring and experienced leaders alike how to more positively influence the impression they make on others.
Stand Up For Yourself Without Getting Fired: Resolve Workplace Crises Before You Quit, Get Axed, or Sue the Bastards
by Donna BallmanTake a deep breath and learn how to deal with a bad work situation: “Like having an employment attorney on call. . . . It’s exactly what employees need.” —Alison Green, author of Ask A ManagerUSA Best Book Award WinnerHate your job? Ready to quit? Facing a layoff before you even have a chance to quit? Is your boss is a flaming jerk? Think you might have a lawsuit? If any of these scenarios apply to you, you are facing a crucial career moment—and mistakes and misinformation will cost you dearly.In Stand Up for Yourself Without Getting Fired, celebrated attorney Donna Ballman provides winning answers to these and many more tough questions, such as:I think they’re getting ready to lay me off. What can I do?My boss is creating a hostile environment. Can I sue?What does it mean if I sign a paper saying I’m an independent contractor and not an employee?Am I exempt from overtime?Whether you’re a recent college grad or an almost-retiree, newly employed or laid off after twenty years; gay or straight; single or married with kids; janitor or CEO . . . Stand Up for Yourself Without Getting Fired will give you the specific and relevant advice you need to face any career-threatening situation . . . and come out ahead.
Stand, Speak, Deliver!: How to survive and thrive in public speaking and presenting
by Vaughan EvansPublic speaking and presenting rank in the top ten of people's greatest fears. Yet being able to speak coherently and persuasively in a speech, seminar or meeting room is important when progressing our careers and living our lives to the fullest.In this book, 37 pithy, lively and witty mini-speeches tell us how to construct and deliver a speech or presentation. Each example speech follows a simple, perfect structure which will soon become imprinted in your mind. Each focuses on one facet of speaking and gives you the very essentials picked up by the author over 25 years of experience.And each speech will entertain as much as inform you.Stand, Speak, Deliver! will enable you to learn how to use your eyes, vary your voice and move your body. It will also look at how to inform, entertain, humour, persuade, motivate or inspire the audience; how to present, to colleagues or clients; how to introduce a speaker; and how to wow as best man. And you will discover the ultimate secret...!Read the book, enjoy it and you will survive as a speaker. Follow it and you will thrive!
Stand, Speak, Deliver!: How to survive and thrive in public speaking and presenting
by Vaughan EvansPublic speaking and presenting rank in the top ten of people's greatest fears. Yet being able to speak coherently and persuasively in a speech, seminar or meeting room is important when progressing our careers and living our lives to the fullest.In this book, 37 short, lively and pithy speeches tell us how to construct and deliver a speech or presentation. Each example speech follows a simple, perfect structure which will soon become imprinted in your mind. Each focuses on one facet of speaking and gives you the very essentials picked up by the author over 25 years of experience.Stand, Speak, Deliver! will enable you to learn how to use your eyes, vary your voice and move your body. It will also look at how to inform, entertain, humour, persuade, motivate or inspire the audience; how to present, to colleagues or clients; how to introduce a speaker; and how to wow as best man. And you will discover the ultimate secret...!Read the book and you will survive as a speaker. Follow it and you will thrive!e!
Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics
by Gary SmithHow statistical data is used, misused, and abused every day to fool us: “A very entertaining book about a very serious problem.” —Robert J. Shiller, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and author of Irrational ExuberanceDid you know that baseball players whose names begin with “D” are more likely to die young? That Asian Americans are most susceptible to heart attacks on the fourth day of the month? That drinking a full pot of coffee every morning adds years to your life, but one cup a day increases your pancreatic cancer risk? These “facts” have been argued with a straight face by credentialed researchers and backed up with reams of data and convincing statistics. As Nobel Prize–winning economist Ronald Coase cynically observed, “If you torture data long enough, it will confess.” Lying with statistics is a time-honored con. In Standard Deviations, economics professor Gary Smith walks us through the various tricks and traps that people use to back up their own crackpot theories. Sometimes, the unscrupulous deliberately try to mislead us. Other times, the well-intentioned are blissfully unaware of the mischief they are committing. Today, data is so plentiful that researchers spend precious little time distinguishing between good, meaningful indicators and total rubbish. Not only do others use data to fool us, we fool ourselves. Drawing on breakthrough research in behavioral economics and using clear examples, Standard Deviations demystifies the science behind statistics and makes it easy to spot the fraud all around us.“An entertaining primer . . . packed with figures, tables, graphs and ludicrous examples from people who know better (academics, scientists) and those who don’t (political candidates, advertisers).” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Standards and Innovations in Information Technology and Communications
by Dina Šimunić Ivica PavićThis book gives a thorough explanation of standardization, its processes, its life cycle, and its related organization on a national, regional and global level. The book provides readers with an insight in the interaction cycle between standardization organizations, government, industry, and consumers. The readers can gain a clear insight to standardization and innovation process, standards, and innovations life-cycle and the related organizations with all presented material in the field of information and communications technologies. The book introduces the reader to understand perpetual play of standards and innovation cycle, as the basis for the modern world.
Standing Up to China: How a Whistleblower Risked Everything for His Country
by Ashley YablonWhat would you do if your ambitious career suddenly transformed into a deadly game of international espionage? A true-life thriller equal to that of a heart-stopping John Grisham novel, Ashley Yablon's story takes readers into the dark crevices of deceit and corporate greed of one of the world's most powerful Chinese telecom giants. As the freshly minted General Counsel for telecom company ZTE, Yablon uncovers an illegal scheme selling billions of dollars' worth of surveillance equipment to embargoed countries. If left unchecked, these transactions could threaten the security of the United States at the highest levels. Instead of turning a blind eye, Yablon risks everything, including his life and career, to uphold justice - leading him down a course of personal and professional destruction. In this modern-day story of David and Goliath, Yablon goes head-to-head with some of the most dangerous and powerful Chinese crime bosses in the world.
Standing Up, Speaking Out: Stand-Up Comedy and the Rhetoric of Social Change
by Matthew R. Meier Casey R. SchmittIn recent decades, some of the most celebrated and culturally influential American oratorical performances have come not from political leaders or religious visionaries, but from stand-up comics. Even though comedy and satire have been addressed by rhetorical scholarship in recent decades, little attention has been paid to stand-up. This collection is an attempt to further cultivate the growing conversation about stand-up comedy from the perspective of the rhetorical tradition. It brings together literatures from rhetorical, cultural, and humor studies to provide a unique exploration of stand-up comedy that both argues on behalf of the form’s capacity for social change and attempts to draw attention to a series of otherwise unrecognized rhetors who have made significant contributions to public culture through comedy.
Standing in the Fire: Leading high-heat meetings with clarity, calm, and courage
by Larry DresslerFrom an accomplished international facilitator, &“a must-read for anyone who must navigate through a sea of emotionally charged issues&” (Russell Coff, Associate Professor of Organization and Management, Emory University). Experienced facilitators, OD consultants, coaches, and organizational leaders increasingly find themselves standing in the fire—working in situations where group and community members are polarized, angry, fearful, and confused. Facilitator Larry Dressler has come to believe that simply picking up yet another method or technique won&’t help in situations like these. What has a truly transformational impact is what he calls the &“facilitators presence.&” Cultivating an ability to access a compassionate presence that people experience as open, authentic, and clear in intention during the most difficult situations moves facilitators from being competent professionals to being on a path toward self-mastery. In this helpful guide, he explains how to make that transformation happen.
Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer
by Tim JealNational Book Critics Circle Award Winner: This revelatory biography of the famed adventurer is “commanding, definitive . . . an unalloyed triumph” (The Washington Post Book World).A New York Times Notable Book of the YearHenry Morton Stanley, so the tale goes, was a cruel imperialist who connived with King Leopold II of Belgium in horrific crimes against the people of the Congo. He also conducted the most legendary celebrity interview in history, opening with, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” But these perceptions are not quite true, Tim Jeal shows in this grand and colorful biography. With unprecedented access to previously closed Stanley family archives, Jeal reveals the amazing extent to which Stanley’s public career and intimate life have been misunderstood and undervalued. Jeal recovers the reality of Stanley’s life—a life of almost impossible extremes—in this moving story of tragedy, adventure, disappointment, and success.Few have started life as disadvantaged as Stanley. Rejected by both parents and consigned to a Welsh workhouse, he emigrated to America as a penniless eighteen-year-old. Jeal vividly re-creates Stanley’s rise as a reporter, his friendships and romantic relationships, and his life-changing decision to assume an American identity. Stanley’s epic but unfairly forgotten African journeys are thrillingly described, establishing the explorer as the greatest to set foot on the continent. Few biographies can claim so thoroughly to reappraise a reputation; few portray a more extraordinary historical figure.“There have been many biographies of Stanley, but Jeal’s is the most felicitous, the best informed, the most complete and readable.” —Paul Theroux, The New York Times Book Review
Starke Texte der Unternehmenskommunikation: Grundlagen und Anwendungsbeispiele von Public Relations bis Social Media
by Annika SchachDieses Grundlagenwerk zu Texten in Public Relations, Marketing und Werbung bietet einen fundierten und praxisnahen Überblick für Ausbildung, Studium und Berufspraxis.Schreibkompetenz ist in der Kommunikationsbranche wichtiger denn je – aufgrund von unterschiedlichsten digitalen Formatentwicklungen und der wachsenden Aufmerksamkeit für zielgruppengerechte und angemessene Sprache in der Öffentlichkeit. Dazu benötigt es Wissen über zeitgemäße Kommunikation sowie spezifische Kenntnisse über einzelne Textsorten, Formate und Kanäle.Im ersten Buchteil thematisiert die Autorin aktuelle Entwicklungen in Medien und Gesellschaft und beschreibt ihre grundlegenden Auswirkungen auf die Schreibarbeit. Im zweiten Teil werden unterschiedliche Textsorten anhand von Definitionen, Inhalten und Aufbau, sprachlichen Merkmalen und konkreten Praxisbeispielen vorgestellt. Neu in die 2. Auflage aufgenommen wurden die Themen Gendersensibilität und Barrierefreiheit sowie Kommunikation in Audio- und Videoformaten.Ein unverzichtbarer Leitfaden für alle, die heute mit starken Texten professionelle Unternehmenskommunikation betreiben möchten.Für Leser kostenlos: Testen Sie Ihr Wissen mit Fragen und Antworten zum Buch in der Springer-Nature-Flashcards-App.
Starmaker: Life As a Hollywood Publicist with Farrah, The Rat Pack and 600 More Stars Who Fired Me
by Jay BernsteinThis memoir by the legendary publicist offers &“an intimate glimpse into the best and the worst of the golden age of Hollywood&” (Stacy Keach, Golden Globe Award–nominated actor). Jay Bernstein, an entertainment industry fixture who helped launch the careers of celebrities including Farrah Fawcett and Suzanne Somers, was famed for his sense of showmanship, his outrageous style, and the publicity stunts he engineered to get attention for his clients. Starmaker tells his story, from his childhood in Oklahoma City and his first job in a Hollywood mailroom to the ownership of his own public relations firm and his work as a television producer. In addition to a behind-the-scenes look at several generations of show business and hard-hitting insights about how the industry changed over the decades, Bernstein also describes the relationships he had with stars and his notorious techniques, such as paying women to throw hotel keys at Tom Jones, having Entertainment Tonight host Mary Hart&’s legs insured for one million dollars, and getting married underwater for an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. With the wisdom of experience and a sense of humor, this autobiography shares the intimate details of a fascinating Hollywood life.
Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity
by Elizabeth CurridThe author of The Warhol Economy asks how does celebrity work and why do we care about some people more than others? What is celebrity? Why is it such a dominant force in our culture? And why do we seem preoccupied with it now more than ever? Celebrity—our collective fascination with particular people—is everywhere and takes many forms, from the sports star, notorious Wall Street tycoon, or film icon, to the hometown quarterback, YouTube sensation, or friend who compulsively documents his life on the Internet. We follow with rapt attention all the minute details of stars' lives: their romances, their spending habits, even how they drink their coffee. For those anointed, celebrity can translate into big business and top social status, but why do some attain stardom while millions of others do not? Why are we simply more interested in certain people? Elizabeth Currid-Halkett presents the first rigorous exploration of celebrity, arguing that our desire to "celebrate" some people and not others has profound implications, elevating social statuses, making or breaking careers and companies, and generating astronomical dividends. Tracing the phenomenon from the art world to tabletop gaming conventions to the film industry, Currid-Halkett looks at celebrity as an expression of economics, geography (both real and virtual), and networking strategies.Starstruck brings together extensive statistical research and analysis, along with interviews with top agents and publicists, YouTube executives, major art dealers and gallery directors, Bollywood players, and sports experts. Laying out the enormous impact of the celebrity industry and identifying the patterns by which individuals become stars, Currid-Halkett successfully makes the argument that celebrity is an important social phenomenon and a driving force in the worldwide economy.