Author: Sheldon Rampton File Type: pdf Amazon.com ReviewFearless investigative journalists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! and Mad Cow U.S.A.) are back with a gripping expose of the public relations industry and the scientists who back their business-funded, anti-consumer-safety agendas. There are two kinds of experts in question--the PR spin doctors behind the scenes and the independent experts paraded before the public, scientists who have been hand-selected, cultivated, and paid handsomely to promote the views of corporations involved in controversial actions. Lively writing on controversial topics such as dioxin, bovine growth hormone, and genetically modified food makes this a real page-turner, shocking in its portrayal of the real and potential dangers in each of these technological innovations and of the media pseudo-environment created to obfuscate the risks. By financing and publicizing views that support the goals of corporate sponsors, PR campaigns have, over the course of the century, managed to suppress the dangers of lead poisoning for decades, silence the scientist who discovered that rats fed on genetically modified corn had significant organ abnormalities, squelch television and newspaper stories about the risks of bovine growth hormone, and place enough confusion and doubt in the publics mind about global warming to suppress any mobilization for action. Rampton and Stauber introduce the movers and shakers of the PR industry, from the risk communicators (whose job is to downplay all risks) and outrage managers (with their four strategies--deflect, defer, dismiss, or defeat) to those who specialize in public policy intelligence (spying on opponents). Evidently, these elaborate PR campaigns are created for our own good. According to public relations philosophers, the public reacts emotionally to topics related to health and safety and is incapable of holding rational discourse. Needless to say, Rampton and Stauber find these views rather antidemocratic and intend to pull back the curtain to reveal the real wizard in Oz. This is one wake-up call thats hard to resist. --Lesley ReedFrom Publishers WeeklyRecent surveys show that national experts are the third most trusted type of public figure (after Supreme Court justices and schoolteachers). Hard-hitting investigative journalists Rampton and Stauber (Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!) ask whether that trust is misplaced. They assert that, with highly technical issues like environmental pollution and bioengineered foodstuffs, people are encouraged to suspend their own judgment and abandon responsibility to the experts. The authors examine the opinions of many so-called experts to show how their opinions are often marred by conflicts of interest. Peering behind the curtain of decision making, they catch more than a few with blood money on their hands. From spin doctors with dubious credentials to think tanks that do everything but think and scientists who work backwards to engineer desired experimental results, Rampton and Stauber present an astonishing compendium of alleged abuses of the publics willingness to believe. Particularly sobering is their summary of the historical use of experts by the tobacco and mining industries, which, they reveal, have suppressed and manipulated information in order to slow industrial reform. Their allegation that industry flaks may be purposely clouding the current debates swirling around junk science and global warming issues should provoke readers to reexamine these matters. Rampton and Staubers impassioned call for skepticism goes beyond rhetoricAthey also offer practical guidelines for separating propaganda from useful information. Agent, Tom Grady. (Jan. 2) Forecast The authors gloves-off approach, which is effectively signaled by the pointed and irreverent cartoon-style jacket, will appeal to fans of Bill Moyers, Jeremy Rifkin and Barbara Ehrenreich (who all blurbed the book). 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author: Terry Harpold File Type: pdf Every reading is, strictly speaking, unrepeatable something in it, of it, will vary. Recollections of reading accumulate in relation to this iterable specificity each takes its predecessors as its foundation, each inflects them with its backward-looking futurity. In Ex-foliations, Terry Harpold investigates paradoxes of readings backward glances in the theory and literature of the digital field. In original analyses of Vannevar Bushs Memex and Ted Nelsons Xanadu, and in innovative readings of early hypertext fictions by Michael Joyce and Shelley Jackson, Harpold asserts that we should return to these landmarks of new media scholarship with newly focused attention on questions of media obsolescence, changing user interface designs, and the mutability of reading. In these reading machines, Harpold proposes, we may detect traits of an unreadable surfacethe real limit of the machines operations and of the readers memorieson which text and image are projected in the late age of print.

Author: T. M. Devine File Type: pdf Received to wide acclaim when first published in the 1990s, this absorbing book remains one of the most important, influential and widely-read histories of the Scottish Highlands from the end of the Jacobite Risings to the great crofters rebellion of the 1880s. T. M. Devine argues that the Highlands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the wholesale transformation of a society at a pace without parallel anywhere else in western Europe. This is an important book for all those interested in the history of the Scottish Highlands and Islands, and for students and scholars of Scottish history, social history and rural society. **

Author: Chip Heath File Type: epub BONUS This edition contains an excerpt from Chip Heath and Dan Heaths Switch. Mark Twain once observed, A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on. His observation rings true Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideasbusiness people, teachers, politicians, journalists, and others struggle to make their ideas stick. Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. In this indispensable guide, we discover that sticky messages of all kindsfrom the infamous kidney theft ring hoax to a coachs lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony draw their power from the same six traits. Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. Its a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures) the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideasand tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.