From the early twentieth century until the Communist takeover in 1949, Shanghai commercial artists created thousands of colorful posters and black and white advertisements that formed an essential part of modern life in the city. This visually appealing and richly illustrated work describes the origin and evolution of modern commercial art in China, focusing on colorful advertisement calendar posters that featured distinctive feminine images. It makes clear how essential commercial art and its institutional backing were to the development of modern art and even modern society in China over the past century. Selling Happiness discusses not only advertising art but also the production and marketing of the calendar poster. These posters, like other advertisements, were rendered in a Western realistic technique and were wildly and widely popular. Ordinary people throughout China often acquired them to decorate their homes. Laing outlines how the Chinese commercial artist, who rarely attended formal Western art classes, gained skills in Western representational art. In the final chapter of the book, she explains how the styles developed by the commercial poster artists during the 1920s and 1930s became the basis for certain types of propaganda art under the Chinese Communists in the 1950s and 1960s.
Pay brand-new employees $2,000 to quit Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company-not just a department Focus on company culture as the #1 priority Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business Help employees grow-both personally and professionally Seek to change the world Oh, and make money too . . . Sound crazy? It's all standard operating procedure at Zappos, the online retailer that's doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually. After debuting as the highest-ranking newcomer in Fortune magazine's annual "Best Companies to Work For" list in 2009, Zappos was acquired by Amazon in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing. In Delivering Happiness, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business, through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Fast-paced and down-to-earth, Delivering Happiness shows how a very different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success-and how by concentrating on the happiness of those around you, you can dramatically increase your own. #1 New York Timesand Wall Street Journal bestseller
"As the first substantial investigation of commercial art in China, Selling Happiness explains how the early twentieth century Chinese public came in accept Western style art as mainstream and the heretofore ignored process by which the Chinese art world became (in some sectors at least) thoroughly cosmopolitan. A monumental study of the most important genre of modern Chinese commercial art, this volume will appeal not only to historians of Chinese art but also to those interested in literary, economic, and social history. It will be an essential resource for comparative studies of visual culture."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
A fun, illustrated guide that takes us around the world, discovering the secrets to happiness. Author Helen Russell (The Year of Living Danishly) uncovers the fascinating ways that different nations search for happiness in their lives, and what they can teach us about our own quest for meaning. This charming and diverse assortment of advice, history, and philosophies includes: Sobremesa from Spain Turangawaewae from New Zealand Azart from Russia Tarab from Syria joie de vivre from Canada and many more.
A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we’re so lousy at predicting what will make us happy – and what we can do about it. Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to imagine what the future will hold, they make some basic and consistent mistakes. Just as memory plays tricks on us when we try to look backward in time, so does imagination play tricks when we try to look forward. Using cutting-edge research, much of it original, Gilbert shakes, cajoles, persuades, tricks and jokes us into accepting the fact that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was. Among the unexpected questions he poses: Why are conjoined twins no less happy than the general population? When you go out to eat, is it better to order your favourite dish every time, or to try something new? If Ingrid Bergman hadn’t gotten on the plane at the end of Casablanca, would she and Bogey have been better off? Smart, witty, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there.
Provides an overview of the big issues in the business world today, with firsthand accounts from young leaders tasked with tackling these issues head on.
WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER! IF YOU'RE IN SALES, FEAR HAS COST YOU MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, AND THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU. Fear is the reason most salespeople don't like to pick up the phone (salespeople average just four hours per week on the phone, and our job is to talk to humans!). Fear is the reason we don't ask for the business more, even though our customers want to buy from us. Fear is the reason we don't offer our customers additional products and services, even though they would love to buy more from us. This book deals with that fear. You will learn exactly how to overcome this destructive fear in sales, and replace it with confidence, optimism, gratitude, joy, and proactive sales work. These are the powerful principles in the new field of positive psychology which are transforming how we work and succeed. Selling Boldly is the first book that leverages positive psychology to help you sell more. You'll also learn a series of fast, simple sales-growth techniques—like how to add on to existing orders; and how to close 20% more quotes and proposals instantly; and how to properly ask for and receive referrals—that will grow your sales...dramatically and quickly. Alex Goldfayn's clients grow their sales by 10-20% annually, every year, as long as they apply his simple approaches. YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT TO DO I am not going to teach you much in this book that you don't already know. You're a professional salesperson. You do this for a living. You know, for example, that testimonials and referrals are among the best ways we have to grow sales, right? But do you ask for them enough? Most people don't. You know that calling a customer on the phone is more effective than emailing her, but you still often revert to email. You know your customers buy other products and services that you can help them with, but you don't ask them about these products. You’d like to help them, and they would like more of your help — that is why they've been with you for five or ten or twenty years — but nevertheless we don't ask them. There is a difference between knowing what to do, and actually doing it. I know you know. With Selling Boldly, we start to do what we already know. We will cover what keeps us from doing these things (fear), how to overcome it (by listening to your happy customers), and how to implement these simple but powerful sales growth techniques (by briefly planning them, also doing them). Because sales growth comes from doing, not knowing. Today, we start doing. And growing. These approaches are laid out in this book, in precise detail, for you to implement in your own work. Alex doesn't hold anything back in this manual for selling more. What's the secret to selling more? There is no secret. There is no magic bullet. There is only the work. There are only the mindsets, and the communications. In Selling Boldly, Alex teaches readers how to attain these mindsets, and how to implement these communications, so that sales have no choice but to grow!
The author analyzes evidence and empirical research to determine which groups are the happiest in America; and offers suggestions on how the government can help individuals maximize their happiness.
Fearless gonzo journalism—an insider’s look at the enigmatic and successful CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, and his quest to create his own version of utopia in the center of Las Vegas. In 2010 Tony Hsieh was introduced to many as a visionary modern business leader. Under Hsieh’s leadership, Zappos became the world’s largest online shoe company by championing satisfied customers and a valued workforce. After his company was purchased by Amazon, even as he continued as its CEO, Hsieh engaged his energies and considerable fortune toward a much larger goal: building a new and more socially conscious Silicon Valley in the heart of downtown Las Vegas, all within his five-year plan. Hsieh challenged business and technology journalist Aimee Groth to uproot her life and participate in his social engineering experiment. Beginning with couch surfing, moving to a Downtown Project crash pad, and then living in Zappos corporate housing above the Gold Spike bar, Groth had a front-row view of Hsieh’s efforts to build his ideal society. With interviews from insiders on all ends of the Zappos spectrum—like the “broken dolls” who gravitate toward Hsieh’s almost cultlike personality and make up some of his inner circle, to the Zapponians who live and work on campus, to players in the top echelon of Silicon Valley—Groth offers a unique view of a world few people know much about, and sheds a new light on this complex, eccentric man. The Kingdom of Happiness is the story of one man’s quest to create his own nirvana in the desert based on his exacting design and experimentation with lessons he’s gleaned not only from the incredible success of Zappos, but also from rave culture and Burning Man. Is it the business model of the future or a cautionary tale of hubris?
