Plugger


Book Description

Rudy Grigar shares the experiences he has had while saltwater wadefishing in the coastal waters of Texas and Louisiana.










Pluggers


Book Description

Fast becoming the replacement for The Far Side, here is the first book featuring the Pluggers--saluting the unheralded, underappreciated segment of society that all too often gets the short straw. In Pluggerville, persistance pays, accidents happen, and wit and grit save the day. Line art throughout.




Coaching and Mentoring For Dummies


Book Description

If you want to create a lean, mean, working machine in today’s environment you need a game plan for building employee morale and commitment. By coaching and mentoring your work force—instead of implementing staid traditional management techniques—you’ll start to see tremendous results. Regardless of where you find yourself on the corporate ladder and what level of authority you carry, what you and other managers share in common is the responsibility for the performance of others. Coaching and Mentoring For Dummies can open your eyes to this innovative way of managing and show you the best way to get the most out of those who work for you. Coaching and Mentoring For Dummies provides the foundation for understanding what business coaching is all about, and helps you gain or improve the coaching skills that drive employee performance and commitment. These skills, which serve as the main topics of this book, involve: getting employees to deliver the results you need; guiding employees to think and do for themselves; motivating employees to take on responsibility and perform effectively; and growing employee capabilities that lead to career development and success You’ll also discover how to: Use questions rather than commands Be a delegator, not a doer Complete performance reviews without anxiety Grow your employees’ talents Increase productivity and decrease turnover With Coaching and Mentoring For Dummies as your guide, you can start to put these techniques and tools to work for you and inspire your employees in ways you never imagined. From tried-and-true worksheets to tools that you can tailor to you own situation, this friendly guide helps you call all the right plays with regards to your employees. Forget about micromanaging! When you become a coach, you’ll be surprised by the tasks your group can perform.The fun and easy guide to today's hottest trends in management training, Coaching and Mentoring For Dummies shows managers how to take advantage of these state-of-the-art management tools -- without spending hundreds of dollars on training seminars! This book features Guidance on being a coach rather than a doer" and giving feedback in a positive way Advice on motivating, grooming, and growing employees Tips on tackling diversity issues, performance reviews, and other challenges Put these techniques and tools to work and inspire your employees in ways you never imagined. Forget about micromanaging! When you become a coach, you'll be surprised by the tasks your group can perform.







Selling Sounds


Book Description

From Tin Pan Alley to grand opera, player-pianos to phonograph records, David Suisman’s Selling Sounds explores the rise of music as big business and the creation of a radically new musical culture. Around the turn of the twentieth century, music entrepreneurs laid the foundation for today’s vast industry, with new products, technologies, and commercial strategies to incorporate music into the daily rhythm of modern life. Popular songs filled the air with a new kind of musical pleasure, phonographs brought opera into the parlor, and celebrity performers like Enrico Caruso captivated the imagination of consumers from coast to coast. Selling Sounds uncovers the origins of the culture industry in music and chronicles how music ignited an auditory explosion that penetrated all aspects of society. It maps the growth of the music business across the social landscape—in homes, theaters, department stores, schools—and analyzes the effect of this development on everything from copyright law to the sensory environment. While music came to resemble other consumer goods, its distinct properties as sound ensured that its commercial growth and social impact would remain unique. Today, the music that surrounds us—from iPods to ring tones to Muzak—accompanies us everywhere from airports to grocery stores. The roots of this modern culture lie in the business of popular song, player-pianos, and phonographs of a century ago. Provocative, original, and lucidly written, Selling Sounds reveals the commercial architecture of America’s musical life.










George Gershwin


Book Description

This comprehensive biography of George Gershwin (1898-1937) unravels the myths surrounding one of America's most celebrated composers and establishes the enduring value of his music. Gershwin created some of the most beloved music of the twentieth century and, along with Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter, helped make the golden age of Broadway golden. Howard Pollack draws from a wealth of sketches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, books, articles, recordings, films, and other materials—including a large cache of Gershwin scores discovered in a Warner Brothers warehouse in 1982—to create an expansive chronicle of Gershwin’s meteoric rise to fame. He also traces Gershwin’s powerful presence that, even today, extends from Broadway, jazz clubs, and film scores to symphony halls and opera houses. Pollack’s lively narrative describes Gershwin’s family, childhood, and education; his early career as a pianist; his friendships and romantic life; his relation to various musical trends; his writings on music; his working methods; and his tragic death at the age of 38. Unlike Kern, Berlin, and Porter, who mostly worked within the confines of Broadway and Hollywood, Gershwin actively sought to cross the boundaries between high and low, and wrote works that crossed over into a realm where art music, jazz, and Broadway met and merged. The author surveys Gershwin’s entire oeuvre, from his first surviving compositions to the melodies that his brother and principal collaborator, Ira Gershwin, lyricized after his death. Pollack concludes with an exploration of the performances and critical reception of Gershwin's music over the years, from his time to ours.