Book Description
The son of a Vanderbilt heiress, John Hammond listened to jazz records with his parents' servants, went to Harlem as a teenager and became a regular in clubs where very few white faces ever appeared. Taking a little family money, Hammond went across racial lines in pre-WWII America and came back with recordings of some of the greatest jazz musicians in history. By age twenty-two, he had convinced Benny Goodman to integrate his band and made his first big discovery: Billie Holiday. Then, as jazz gave way to pop and rock, Hammond championed Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan in his life's extraordinary second act. In Dunstan Prial's hands, Hammond's biography becomes the story of American popular music since the 1930s, a tale of a man at the center of things, with his ears wide open. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

interesting and well written
My only negative comment is perhaps some repetitiveness in some of the comments in the book. Otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed it. I like biographies in general. This is a must read for people interested in the music business. Mr. Hammond was an interesting character and a man who stood up for what he believed in. He loved jazz, and fought for racial equality. It is amazing how many different artists he was instrumental in promoting over the years.

A distant but still interesting account of John Hammond
John Hammond was a key figure in American popular music, bring diverse talents such as Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughn,to widespread audiences. He also helped promote entire categories of music, including jazz, blues, and folk, contributing significantly to the popular revivals of these fields. Duston Prial's biography is insightful, based on careful research in libraries and through interviews. The book is well written, and it will be an important document in maintaining Hammond's well deserved reputation as a cultural icon.

Hammond, however, appears as a somewhat distant character in Prial's account. One never really gets a sense of John Hammond's inner, subjective sense. Prial at times seems more concerned with pointing out where Hammond errored in his own autobiography -- "John Hammond on Record" (written with Irving Townsend and published in 1977) -- such as in the case of the reported causes of singer Bessie Smith's death. Prial fails to consider that Hammond actually may have believed (or internalized after so many retellings) the accounts that attributed her death to racist treatment following a car accident. Instead, Prial tells us, "The whole episode was an unseemly case of Hammond's not allowing the facts to get in the way of his good story."

In some cases it in the book it is not clear why Prial favors one version of events over another. The classic example is his account of Bob Dylan's trying to get out of his Columbia records contract. Readers interested in this incident should compare the richly insightful if brief account given by Hammond in his autobiography with Prial's retelling. These quibbles aside, Prial's book makes for enjoyable reading.

John Hammond: Behind the Music
> John Hammond's discovery and signing of superstars like Bob Dylan, Bruce
> Springsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughn assure that most rock fans are familiar
> with the image of the tall man, impeccably dressed with a wide grin.
>
> In "The Producer", an enlightening and gripping page turner, you learn that
> Hammond played a leading role changing and developing American music. In
> this book you watch the musical landscape of the 20th century move quickly
> and dramatically. Remarkably, Hammond, a man whose instincts, generosity and
> enthusiasm are without parallel in the music industry was there for nearly
> all of it. The author's ability to move the action as well as exercise his
> generous and in-depth knowledge of jazz, folk blues and rock in an
> entertaining and informative manner is only one part of the "The Producer's"
> achievements.
>
> As importantly, we learn that Hammond's innate stubbornness and privileged
> upbringing gave him an unfaltering conviction that great music would succeed
> in transcending racism and a segregated society. His involvement with the
> burgeoning civil rights movement is written with great detail and
> illustrates how Hammond would put his money, energies and reputation into
> anything he believed strongly in.
>
> Above all, like all good books about music or musicians, "The Producer"
> sends you back to discover or rediscover great American music that was
> Hammond's proudest achievement. ... Read more

Book Description
Most treatments of slavery, politics, and expansion in the early American republic focus narrowly on congressional debates and the inaction of elite "founding fathers" such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West, John Craig Hammond looks beyond elite leadership and examines how the demands of western settlers, the potential of western disunion, and local, popular politics determined the fate of slavery and freedom in the West between 1790 and 1820.

By shifting focus away from high politics in Philadelphia and Washington, Hammond demonstrates that local political contests and geopolitical realities were more responsible for determining slavery's fate in the West than were the clashing proslavery and antislavery proclivities of Founding Fathers and politicians in the East. When efforts to prohibit slavery revived in 1819 with the Missouri Controversy it was not because of a sudden awakening to the problem on the part of northern Republicans, but because the threat of western secession no longer seemed credible.

Including detailed studies of popular political contests in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri that shed light on the western and popular character of conflicts over slavery, Hammond also provides a thorough analysis of the Missouri Controversy, revealing how the problem of slavery expansion shifted from a local and western problem to a sectional and national dilemma that would ultimately lead to disunion and civil war. ... Read more

Book Description
This is the first of two volumes to appear in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of John Webster, beginning with the plays The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. While both of these plays are available in modernized versions, the Cambridge edition incorporates the most recent editorial scholarship, including valuable information on Webster's biography, new critical methods, and textual theory. The edition also presents previously unpublished material, such as a fragment of an otherwise lost play and a hitherto unknown poem, in addition to a brief biography of Webster, a history of the Webster canon, and each play's reception history. The following volume will include the other plays as well as the poems and prose. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (4)

luz y color
the book is good, and the illustrations and explanations also. it has many landscapes to support the advice and lessons

Bring Your Paintings to Life
I just received this book and already I can see how the techniques described and displayed will greatly improve the "look" I'm going after. An artist friend saw the book and barely wanted to give it back after thumbing through just a few pages. This book is BEAUTIFULLY illustrated with the talented Mr. Hammond's artwork, but his narrative is so clear and concise that you know his good influences will show up in your own work and improve your own style. This is not a book for beginners, but intermediates will gain so much more and even old pro's can incorporate techniques that will help bring paintings to life through light!

I've Been Looking for this Book!
I am an artist and painting teacher working in oils, which I love.But, increasingly, I have students who want to paint in acrylics.There aren't that many books out there on the subject, but this clearly explains how to paint in acrylics and achieve the fine art look of oils.It goes beyond, and shows what acrylics can do that oils can't.So, now rather than think there are two mediums, watercolor and oil with acrylics somewhere far below - I now see acrylics as a third medium with it's own advantages and possibilities.This book covers all of the basics that a good book or teacher covers ... color, temperature, value, edges and design."Capturing Light in Acrylics" should be on every acyrlic painter's shelf ... and maybe the oil painter's and watercolorist's, too.

Very well presented
I was delighted to look over the book.It is well written, beautifully illustrated, clear to use.It ranks very highly in my estimation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Interesting but biased...
One can't deny John Hammond's contribution to Jazz. The man "discovered" Billie Holiday, Teddy Wilson, Count Basie and produced tons of records. On the other hand, he had a "bon savage" view of the Jazz musician that was far from reality. When Ellington began composing his "mood pieces", Hammond, until that time a Duke champion, became an enemy. His attitudes were both paternalist and naive. And this book reflects this behavior. ... Read more

Book Description
The apparel and textile industries have always been at the mercy of rapidly changing styles and fickle customers who want the latest designs while they are still in fashion.The result for these businesses, often forced to forecast sales and order from suppliers with scant information about volatile demand, is a history of stock shortages, high inventories, and costly markdowns.But, as the authors explain in A Stitch in Time, technological advances in the 1980s paved the way for a new concept in retailing--lean retailing.Pioneered by companies like WAL-MART, lean retailing has reshaped the way that products are ordered, virtually eliminating delays from distribution center to sales rack by drawing on sales data captured electronically at the checkout counter. Armed with up-to-the-minute data about colors, sizes, styles, and geographic sales, apparel and textile companies now must be able to respond rapidly to real-time orders efficiently based on new approaches to distributing merchandise, forecasting, planning, organizing production, and managing supplier relations.A Stitch in Time shows that even in the face of burgeoning product proliferation, companies that successfully adapt to the world of lean retailing can reduce inventory risk, reduce costs, and increase profitability while improving their responsiveness to the ever-changing tastes of customers.Based on the success of these practices in the apparel industry, lean retailing practices are propagating through a growing number of consumer product industries.A richly detailed and resonant account, A Stitch in Time brilliantly captures both the history and future of the retail-apparel-textile channel and offers bold insights on the changes and challenges facing retailers and manufacturers in all segments of our rapidly changing economy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Very Informative
A Stitch In Time is a very good read.

While some academics tend to write books that are beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, this book is very readable, even to a layman like me who has no previous experience in the fashion/apparel/textiles business. The authors have explained techniques in manufacturing and theoretical concepts very clearly. Although it is obvious that much research has been done, the authors did not bore the reader with useless facts and figures just to prove the amount of research that has been done. Rather, significant findings were highlighted whenever appropriate, which made the book more interesting and comprehensible.

The authors believe that a new form of retailing, defined as lean retailing by the authors, will soon make its impact in the retail industry. Major retailers, like Wal-Mart, already practise this form of retailing. The theory of lean retailing propose that as there is an increase in product proliferation, and as customers demand quicker response times, retailers will "force" suppliers to replenish supplies at shorter intervals with smaller quantities. This will reduce inventory, cost and risk. While suppliers may choose to hold more inventories to satisfy lean retailers like Wal-Mart, it is a short-term solution. It is merely pushing the ineffectiveness of the system from retailers to apparel manufacturers. A better way is to re-look the industry from a channel angle, i.e. the whole chain of retailer-supplier-textile manufacturer. How can the channel be more effective as a whole? The authors believe information integration and co-operation is the key.

While the focus of the book has been on the fashion/apparel/textiles industry, I believe the concepts can also be applied to other industries. In fact, I believe the concepts were "borrowed" from more advanced industries like automobile manufacturing. Some of the concepts are similar to concepts in operations management like JIT, sales forecasting, etc.

I recommend this book to anyone in the retail business. This book will change your mindset of traditional retailing, whether you are in the fashion retail or not. I also recommend this book to people who are interested in exploiting IT for the exchanging of information between suppliers and retailers. I have learnt a lot from the book and I am sure many readers will agree with me.

Review of A Stitch in Time
This is an extremely lively and readable account of changes in the U.S. apparel industry.It challenges the prevailing assumption that the industry is doomed to move offshore in its entirety. The authors arguepersuasively that there will be a continuing need for apparel production inthe U.S. by firms that cooperate more closely with retailers, and meet thedemand for timely production.In addition, the authors present afascinating history of the industry and a wonderfully detailed discussionof its changing technology. This book is useful to those interestedspecifically in the apparel industry, but also as a case study of how newinformation technologies are reshaping U.S. industries more generally.

A welcome in-depth look at the effects of the IT revolution
The book goes beyond the hyped-up jargon of e-commerce and information technology and instead provides a nuts and bolts understanding of theactual impact of these trends on businesses, workers and the Americaneconomy.While it focuses on just one industry (one with which we can allidentify, as consumers of clothing and customers of the Walmarts, J. Crewsand Dillard's of the world), it gives a much broader understanding of thetrends and forces that will eventually shape most industres, and affect whowins and loses in this emerging "IT" economy.

The book iseminently readable, packed with real world examples and crisp analysis oftrends that we hear about frequently in the popular press, but rarely seeinvestigated in any real detail. ... Read more

Book Description
Breakthrough biography of a revolutionary thinker who transformed American military policy and practice.

Based on extensive interviews with Boyd and with those who knew him, The Mind of War is the first biography of this pivotal figure in American military history. 13 b/w illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

The OODA Loop
The OODA loop is an affirmation of my theorized belief that all we do in life follows a pattern.The successes and the failures of our endeavors is relative to the degree of our adherence to the said pattern and our familiarity with the task.God Bless the late Col. John Boyd.

Boyd Revealed
Mr. Hammond's The Mind of War has made a major contribution into the philosophy and life of Colonel John R. Boyd. This work centers more around Boyd's work in aircraft design and his post-retirement contributions to maneuver warfare---which were too numerous to list in these pages. All Americans would benefit from reading Mr. Hammond's book and the book written by Mr. Robert Coram, BOYD, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (this book is on my top five biographies ever). Learning Boyd's philosophy and his multi-disciplinary approach has application from the battle-field to the boardroom. Highly recommended.

Good summary
Great summary of John Boyd's thoughts on modern warfare. It is hard to find the wide-range of theories all in one place as is book attempts to condense.Col. Boyd's mind was a far-reaching net pulling diverse subjects together by common threads. It is difficult for any single book to do the same in so few pages but it this one comes close to the mark.

Boyd's intellectual contribution
Hammond presents a quasi-biography of John Boyd, who was the intellectual driver of the OODA loop and the author of "Patterns of Conflict."Although the book reviews Boyd's life, it is done with the intent of focusing on Boyd's intellectual contributions to US military thought and doctrine from the 1970s to 1990s.The author, despite knowing Boyd and being one of his fans, presents a balanced version of Boyd and his contribution, unlike Robert Coram's fun-to-read but biased biography. (Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War)

An Original Thinker Not Promoted Very High
An interesting point about the life of John Boyd, like many visionaries who came before and dramatically changed the way wars are fought is that they tend to not get promoted to very high rank. In a full career John Boyd was not promoted above Colonel. This sounds an awful lot like Billy Mitchell who proved that battleships could be sunk by air power when the battleship people knew, absolutely knew, that they couldn't.

Probably the most interesting part of this book is the story of the development of the F-16 "Lightweight" fighter. This fighter which has proven to be among the very best in the world, went through a torturous birth in two phases.

First, while James Schlesinger was Secretary of Defense, the F-16 was a non-nuclear capable lightweight fighter. The second part is one week after his departure, the requirement was modified to require the ability to carry nuclear weapons. Other changes in Part II added over two tons of electronics to the basic airplane.

The resulting plane, the author contends is a very good airplane, but "it is so much less than it might have been." ... Read more

Book Description
This is the first of two volumes to appear in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of John Webster, beginning with the plays The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. While both of these plays are available in modernized versions, the Cambridge edition incorporates the most recent editorial scholarship, including valuable information on Webster's biography, new critical methods, and textual theory. The edition also presents previously unpublished material, such as a fragment of an otherwise lost play and a hitherto unknown poem, in addition to a brief biography of Webster, a history of the Webster canon, and each play's reception history. The following volume will include the other plays as well as the poems and prose. ... Read more

Book Description
Decision researchers John S. Hammond, a management consultant, Ralph L. Keeney, a professor at the University of Southern California, and Howard Raiffa, a professor emeritus at the Harvard Business School, examine eight psychological traps likely to affect the way we make business decisions: The anchoring trap leads us to give disproportionate weight to the first information we receive. The status-quo trap biases us toward maintaining the current situation--even when better alternatives exist. The sunk-cost trap inclines us to perpetuate past mistakes. The confirming-evidence trap leads us to seek out information supporting an existing predilection and to discount opposing information. The framing trap occurs when we misstate a problem, undermining the entire decision-making process. The overconfidence trap makes us overestimate the accuracy of our forecasts. The prudence trap leads us to be overcautious when we make estimates about uncertain events. And the recallability trap leads us to give undue weight to recent, dramatic events. The best way to avoid all the traps is awareness. But executives can also take other simple steps to protect themselves and their organizations from the various mental lapses. The authors show how to ensure that important business decisions are sound and reliable.Download Description
This is an enhanced edition of HBR article 98505, originally published in September/October 1998. HBR OnPoint articles include the full-text HBR article plus a summary of key ideas and company examples to help you quickly absorb and apply the concepts. HBR OnPoint articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. The human mind is prone to distortions and biases that can undermine even the most well-thought-out decision-making process. Decision researchers John S. Hammond, a management consultant, Ralph L. Keeney, a professor at the University of Southern California, and Howard Raiffa, a professor emeritus at the Harvard Business School, examine eight psychological traps that are particularly likely to affect the way we make business decisions: The anchoring trap leads us to give disproportionate weight to the first information we receive. The status-quo trap biases us toward maintaining the current situation--even when better alternatives exist. The sunk-cost trap inclines us to perpetuate the mistakes of the past. The confirming-evidence trap leads us to seek out information supporting an existing predilection and to discount opposing information. The framing trap occurs when we misstate a problem, undermining the entire decision-making process. The overconfidence trap makes us overestimate the accuracy of our forecasts. The prudence trap leads us to be overcautious when we make estimates about uncertain events. And the recallability trap leads us to give undue weight to recent, dramatic events. The best way to avoid all the traps is awareness--forewarned is forearmed. But executives can also take other simple steps to protect themselves and their organizations from the various kinds of mental lapses. The authors show how to take action to ensure that important business decisions are sound and reliable. ... Read more

Book Description
The apparel and textile industries have always been at the mercy of rapidly changing styles and fickle customers who want the latest designs while they are still in fashion.The result for these businesses, often forced to forecast sales and order from suppliers with scant information about volatile demand, is a history of stock shortages, high inventories, and costly markdowns.But, as the authors explain in A Stitch in Time, technological advances in the 1980s paved the way for a new concept in retailing--lean retailing.Pioneered by companies like WAL-MART, lean retailing has reshaped the way that products are ordered, virtually eliminating delays from distribution center to sales rack by drawing on sales data captured electronically at the checkout counter. Armed with up-to-the-minute data about colors, sizes, styles, and geographic sales, apparel and textile companies now must be able to respond rapidly to real-time orders efficiently based on new approaches to distributing merchandise, forecasting, planning, organizing production, and managing supplier relations.A Stitch in Time shows that even in the face of burgeoning product proliferation, companies that successfully adapt to the world of lean retailing can reduce inventory risk, reduce costs, and increase profitability while improving their responsiveness to the ever-changing tastes of customers.Based on the success of these practices in the apparel industry, lean retailing practices are propagating through a growing number of consumer product industries.A richly detailed and resonant account, A Stitch in Time brilliantly captures both the history and future of the retail-apparel-textile channel and offers bold insights on the changes and challenges facing retailers and manufacturers in all segments of our rapidly changing economy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Very Informative
A Stitch In Time is a very good read.

While some academics tend to write books that are beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, this book is very readable, even to a layman like me who has no previous experience in the fashion/apparel/textiles business. The authors have explained techniques in manufacturing and theoretical concepts very clearly. Although it is obvious that much research has been done, the authors did not bore the reader with useless facts and figures just to prove the amount of research that has been done. Rather, significant findings were highlighted whenever appropriate, which made the book more interesting and comprehensible.

The authors believe that a new form of retailing, defined as lean retailing by the authors, will soon make its impact in the retail industry. Major retailers, like Wal-Mart, already practise this form of retailing. The theory of lean retailing propose that as there is an increase in product proliferation, and as customers demand quicker response times, retailers will "force" suppliers to replenish supplies at shorter intervals with smaller quantities. This will reduce inventory, cost and risk. While suppliers may choose to hold more inventories to satisfy lean retailers like Wal-Mart, it is a short-term solution. It is merely pushing the ineffectiveness of the system from retailers to apparel manufacturers. A better way is to re-look the industry from a channel angle, i.e. the whole chain of retailer-supplier-textile manufacturer. How can the channel be more effective as a whole? The authors believe information integration and co-operation is the key.

While the focus of the book has been on the fashion/apparel/textiles industry, I believe the concepts can also be applied to other industries. In fact, I believe the concepts were "borrowed" from more advanced industries like automobile manufacturing. Some of the concepts are similar to concepts in operations management like JIT, sales forecasting, etc.

I recommend this book to anyone in the retail business. This book will change your mindset of traditional retailing, whether you are in the fashion retail or not. I also recommend this book to people who are interested in exploiting IT for the exchanging of information between suppliers and retailers. I have learnt a lot from the book and I am sure many readers will agree with me.

Review of A Stitch in Time
This is an extremely lively and readable account of changes in the U.S. apparel industry.It challenges the prevailing assumption that the industry is doomed to move offshore in its entirety. The authors arguepersuasively that there will be a continuing need for apparel production inthe U.S. by firms that cooperate more closely with retailers, and meet thedemand for timely production.In addition, the authors present afascinating history of the industry and a wonderfully detailed discussionof its changing technology. This book is useful to those interestedspecifically in the apparel industry, but also as a case study of how newinformation technologies are reshaping U.S. industries more generally.

A welcome in-depth look at the effects of the IT revolution
The book goes beyond the hyped-up jargon of e-commerce and information technology and instead provides a nuts and bolts understanding of theactual impact of these trends on businesses, workers and the Americaneconomy.While it focuses on just one industry (one with which we can allidentify, as consumers of clothing and customers of the Walmarts, J. Crewsand Dillard's of the world), it gives a much broader understanding of thetrends and forces that will eventually shape most industres, and affect whowins and loses in this emerging "IT" economy.

The book iseminently readable, packed with real world examples and crisp analysis oftrends that we hear about frequently in the popular press, but rarely seeinvestigated in any real detail. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Do-It-Yourself Retailing, published by National Retail Hardware Association on June 1, 2005. The length of the article is 734 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Sell shopping experiences: put some sizzle into special events.(In Perspective)
Author: John P. Hammond
Publication: Do-It-Yourself Retailing (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 2005
Publisher: National Retail Hardware Association
Volume: 188Issue: 6Page: 6(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from American Scholar, published by Thomson Gale on June 22, 2006. The length of the article is 2890 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The man who got his way: John Hammond, scion of white privilege, helped integrate popular music.
Author: Wendy Smith
Publication: American Scholar (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 75Issue: 3Page: 110(5)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of John (Henry) Hammond, (Jr.), is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1724 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
chord organ, arranged by John M. hanert ... Read more