Books about Precarious from Amazon.com

If Americans are so prosperous, why do we feel so insecure?

The U.S. economy is wrapping up twenty-five years of some of the strongest, smoothest growth in its history--a performance so sweet economists have given it a name: "the Great Moderation."

So why have so many of us, even those making hundreds of thousands of dollars, arrived at the new century with a gnawing sense that events are moving against our families and ourselves? The easy answer is that we're suffering a case of needless anxiety. But the easy answer is wrong.

Drawing on interviews with hundreds of Americans and new statistics he developed, Peter Gosselin traces a quarter-century shift of economic risk from the broad shoulders of business and government to the backs of working people. It is a shift that has shaken the pillars of most families' lives--stable jobs, solid benefits, government protections. The change doesn't mean one can't prosper. But it does mean the benefits of growth come at greater peril and your financial fall will be steeper if you stumble. This threat to working Americans' security--and what to do about it--is a pressing concern to economists, policy-makers, and everyone who works for a living..
Price: $13.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"A book that shines with the splendor of engaged thought."—The Brooklyn Rail

Judith Butler is one of America's most daring and vibrant thinkers. In this profound appraisal of post-September 11th America, now with a new foreword, Judith Butler considers the conditions of heightened fear and aggression that followed the attack on the Twin Towers, and the US government's decision to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. She critiques this use of violence as a response to loss and grief, and argues that the vulnerability the West now feels offers a chance to imagine a world without violence, a world where the interdependency of peoples and nations becomes the basis for a global political community.

Through five impassioned and personal essays, Butler responds to the current US policies to wage perpetual war, and calls for a deeper understanding of how mourning and violence might instead inspire solidarity and a quest for global justice..
Price: $9.34 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Fearful Rock and Other Precarious Locales is the 3rd volume of Night Shade Books' five volume "Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman " This volume is made up of eight novella length stories It reprints Wellman's "Judge Pursivant" and "Sergeant Jaeger" stories, as well as a lost classic that has not been reprinted since its original publication in Strange Stories, in 1939. In addition, it features an introduction by Wellman's long time friend, Stephen Jones, who provides a heartwarming bit of historical perspective on Wellman, and the influential shadow that his work as cast over the genre. Contents: * Introduction by Stephen Jones * Fearful Rock * Coven * Toad's Foot * For the Love of a Witch * The Hairy Ones Shall Dance * The Black Drama * The Dreadful Rabbits * The Half-Haunted * Some Notes on the Texts by John Pelan.
Price: $17.37 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Bestselling author, 60 Minutes II commentator, and world-champion raconteur Charles Grodin is back and better than ever in this revealing, opinionated, and delightful memoir about life, America, and cable TV.
In a thirty-five-year acting career that ranged from studying at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg to appearing in a box-office smash with a dog named Beethoven, Charles Grodin achieved the American dream. But at the peak of his career in the early 1990s, with a son entering first grade, he decided to give it all up so he could stay close to home. Years earlier, Johnny Carson had put him under exclusive contract as a guest on The Tonight Show. Now, he began a career in television with his own daily talk show on the cable channel CNBC. In I Like It Better When You’re Funny, we join him on a behind-the-scenes journey through the television industry. What he discovers there is more challenging, more startling, and funnier than he ever could have imagined.
In this wide-ranging memoir, Charles Grodin describes the life of a talk show host; his favorite and least favorite guests; the unspoken rules of working in television; and how this wild experience affected his views on America’s culture, government, and media. Along the way, he shares memorable stories and unfettered opinions about some of the industry’s renowned figures—Johnny Carson, Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Carol Burnett, Bill O’Reilly, and Don Imus, to name a few.
With candor and liberating humor, Charles Grodin proves once again that he is one of America’s most entertaining and insightful storytellers..
Price: $0.01 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Is job insecurity the new norm? With fewer and fewer people working in steady, long-term positions for one employer, has the dream of a secure job with full benefits and a decent salary become just that—a dream?

In Nice Work If You Can Get It, Andrew Ross surveys the new topography of the global workplace and finds an emerging pattern of labor instability and uneven development on a massive scale. Combining detailed case studies with lucid analysis and graphic prose, he looks at what the new landscape of contingent employment means for workers across national, class, and racial lines—from the emerging "creative class" of high-wage professionals to the multitudes of temporary, migrant, or low-wage workers. Developing the idea of "precarious livelihoods" to describe this new world of work and life, Ross explores what it means in developed nations—comparing the creative industry policies of the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union, as well as developing countries—by examining the quickfire transformation of China’s labor market. He also responds to the challenge of sustainability, assessing the promise of "green jobs" through restorative alliances between labor advocates and environmentalists.

Ross argues that regardless of one’s views on labor rights, globalization, and quality of life, this new precarious and "indefinite life," and the pitfalls and opportunities that accompany it is likely here to stay and must be addressed in a systematic way. A more equitable kind of knowledge society emerges in these pages"less skewed toward flexploitation and the speculative beneficiaries of intellectual property, and more in tune with ideals and practices that are fair, just, and renewable.

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Price: $18.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When the planet Mercury shifts orbit, we experience a few weeks of missed connections and communication breakdowns. Your package never arrives. You sign a contract that turns into a disaster. You may feel it's bad luck. It's Mercury Retrograde and it's happening to everyone, all at the same time. This is a practical workbook with a calendar to make it simple to look up the times when Mercury is retrograde and plan ahead, and a survival guide with techniques to help you sail through these periods. It explains how Mercury Retrograde is a gift to make your life more fulfilling. The golden secret of Mercury Retrograde is a time to review, revisit, re-examine, rethink and reboot..
Price: $8.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Bringing together international scholars from various disciplines, "Precarious Visualities" examines the transformation of our relation to images in contemporary visual culture. Through the study of exemplary media arts works and practices - photography, film, video, performance, installations, webcams, etc - these essays call attention to the precarious attachments of contemporary spectatorship. To look at an image that prevents the stabilization of identification, identity and place; to perceive a representation that keeps oscillating between visibility and invisibility; to be interpellated by screen-images that have ceased to mirror, resemble or refer in that their power lies exclusively on their simulating, hallucinating, blinding or generating function; to relate to an image which entails a rebalancing of sight through the valorization of other senses; to be exposed - through surveillance devices - to the gaze of new figures of authority, unanticipated. Others: the aesthetic experiences examined here concern a spectator whose perception lacks in certainty, identification and opticality what it gains in fallibility, complexity and interrelatedness. Attentive to these precarious attachments, "Precarious Visualities" provides a new understanding of spectatorship, as a relation that is at once corporeal and imaginary, yet persistently prolific in its cultural, social and political effects..
Price: $26.77 [Notify me when price goes down.]