Gustav Mahler: A Life in Crisis

Book Description

The life of the brilliant composer and conductor Gustav Mahler was punctuated by crisis. His parents both died in 1889, leaving him the reluctant head of a household of siblings. He himself endured a nearly fatal medical ordeal in 1901. A beloved daughter died in 1907 and that same year, under pressure, Mahler resigned from the directorship of the Vienna Opera. In each case Mahler more than mastered the trauma; he triumphed in the creation of new major musical works.
The final crisis of Mahler’s career occurred in 1910, when he learned that his wife, Alma, was having an affair with the architect Walter Gropius. The revelation precipitated a breakdown while Mahler was working on his Tenth Symphony. The anguished, suicidal notes Mahler scrawled across the manuscript of the unfinished symphony revealed his troubled state. A four-hour consultation with Sigmund Freud in Leiden, Holland, restored the composer’s equilibrium. Although Mahler left little record of what transpired in Leiden, Stuart Feder has reconstructed the encounter on the basis of surviving evidence. The cumulative stresses of the crises in Mahler’s life, in particular Alma’s betrayal, left him physically and emotionally vulnerable. He became ill and died soon after in 1911.
At once a sophisticated consideration of Mahler’s work and a psychologically acute portrait of the life events that shaped it, this book extends our thinking about one of the great masters of modern music.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful, fascinating read ..........2006-11-20

This was a fascinating read from start to finish. Feder's psychoanalsis and assumptions aside, Mahler's life was already interesting and filled with excess drama. His relationship with his wife (another fascinating character) and all the name droppings around their small circle of friends/lovers/associates, etc., made this account one any Mahler fan will read cover to cover in a day or two. Just great stuff.

Composer on the couch.(Stuart Feder Gustav Mahler: A Life in Crisis)(Book Review) : An article from: New Criterion

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Composer on the couch.(Stuart Feder Gustav Mahler: A Life in Crisis)(Book Review) : An article from: New Criterion
R.J. Stove
Manufacturer: Foundation for Cultural Review
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Foundation for Cultural Review on December 1, 2004. The length of the article is 1153 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: Composer on the couch.(Stuart Feder Gustav Mahler: A Life in Crisis)(Book Review)
Author: R.J. Stove
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2004
Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
Volume: 23 Issue: 4 Page: 78(3)

Article Type: Book Review

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Gustav Mahler: A Life In Crisis.(Book review): An article from: Canadian Journal of History

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Gustav Mahler: A Life In Crisis.(Book review): An article from: Canadian Journal of History
J. Trygve Has-Ellison
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Canadian Journal of History, published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2006. The length of the article is 689 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: Gustav Mahler: A Life In Crisis.(Book review)
Author: J. Trygve Has-Ellison
Publication: Canadian Journal of History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 41 Issue: 1 Page: 95(2)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Gustav Mahler: A Life in Crisis
Stuart Feder
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OS2GLE

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GUSTAV MAHLER; A LIFE IN CRISIS.
Stuart. Feder
Manufacturer: Yale Univ. Press,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000O7WVS8

Customer Reviews:

From a practical point of view.......2007-04-28

As a practical man, I look at results and behaviors. I really don't care what people say, because you can always tell what people will do from what they've done. Looking at the results of social theories such as this, I see some 200,000,000 innocent individuals senselessly slaughtered in efforts to obtain a more perfect society. People who buy into these rubbish theories will continue to do what the Hitlers, Stalins, and Pol Pots have done in the past.

Again as a practical man, I ask the same question I always ask: Who do YOU, mister socialist, trust to tell you what you need to know, where you can work, what you can own, what you may say, and when your body is no longer needed by the state?

This book goes in the trash with all the other failed socialist theories.

A challenging but brilliant book.......2004-07-26

Having read this book very carefully, I have to respond to the review of Doug Wakeman (two reviews below this one).

In his review title, Doug calls this a dreary, tedious read. There is no question that some will find it that. But for the most part, that will be due to shortcomings or limitations of the reader. I found the book one of the most fascinating I have ever read.

Doug says the book never explains what the social question is. Well, Doug should have read it again perhaps. This book is one of the most penetrating discussions of the core of the social question ever written.

Doug says that the author of the book has a theory that man is composed of three basic parts, body, soul and spirit. Here again Doug is wrong. The author, R. Steiner, doesn't divide the human being into 'parts'. Steiner sees the human being as more like a continuous spectrum. The visible spectrum flows from one color to another without any sharp breaks. A spectrum is not made of 'parts,' nor for Steiner were body, soul and spirit 'parts'.

Doug says that the author concluded that because the human being is body, soul and spirit, therefore the social realm should be perfectly delineated into three equivalent spheres, each totally separate from the other two. How this was to be done, Doug claims, is not explained. Doug is wrong that the author spoke of three social spheres totally separate from one another, or of any perfect delineation to be made between them.

As for understanding how the three spheres might be separated in a less delineated way, I would ask Doug: do you believe in separation of church and state? Probably you do. So do I. Do you think that because church and state are separated, that their boundaries are perfectly delineated and that they are totally separate from one another? Politicians go to church. Priests vote. And in many other ways, the separation is not absolute. Yet we rightly value the separation and rightly think it important despite the fact that it is not absolute. Bottom line is the State may not tell us what church to go to or to go to church at all. And no priest has the right or ability to make the State favor his church. This separation of religion and State was for Steiner a special case of the separation of cultural-spiritual life from the State -- for Steiner, as for most Americans, the State shouldn't control religion, art, or free inquiry, including science, free speech, or the content of education. Why such a separation of the cultural and political realms should be so hard for Doug to understand, is hard to say. Perhaps he did not spend much time on the book, but decided to pan it anyway.

Steiner speaks of separating the cultural-spiritual sphere also from the economic sphere. Since this has so bewildered reviewer Doug, I will give a few small, already existing examples of the kind of thing Steiner was alluding to and would have supported: churches, temples and mosques do not generally make the ability to pay a criterion of the ability to enter and participate in the place of worship. Libraries and art museums exist in part so people who cannot afford a private library or art collection can have access to cultural-spiritual life. Public schools are there in part so kids can have equal opportunity in cultural-educational life, regardless of their ability to pay. Steiner believed in educational freedom and educational choice, and in that sense would have disagreed with the current manner of structuring public schooling, but Steiner very strongly supported the idea that every child, regardless of economic means, was entitled to an education. Examples of what Steiner was talking about are all around, and should not have been difficult for Doug to grasp.

Another small, already existing example of what Steiner meant by increasing the separation of the state from the economy: businessmen should not be able to buy politicians and laws. Politicians should not be able to parlay political position into wealth by doing secret favors for businessmen.

Again, an example of separation of the economic sphere from the cultural sphere: Corporations should not be able secretly to pay scientists to produce pseudo-objective research results favorable to the corporation's economic interests.

These are the sorts of things Steiner means by separating the economic, cultural and political realms from one another. In his book, Steiner doesn't focus on all the examples I have given however, but on how to enhance the independence of the three sectors in several specific, new ways.

Steiner's view is that everything cultural (art, religion, science, education, media, press) requires liberty, everything to do with the State requires democratic equality, and that the economy requires voluntary, non-statist, cooperation. I won't burden readers by attempting to explain everything. Suffice it to say that reflection, I think, can show how applying liberty to the cultural sphere, and equality to the political sphere, will tend to keep those two realms relatively separate from each other. This doesn't mean they won't interact in various useful and important ways. The point is that neither one should dominate the other, their centers (not spatial centers) should be distinct. To the extent the three sectors are distinct in that way, no one of them dominating, they function as a society-wide separation of powers. Each system can then check, balance and correct the others, leading to ongoing reform. To some extent, this is already precisely what happens in American society.

Less immediately clear is why voluntarily more cooperative forms of capitalism, such as Steiner pointed the way toward, have the potential to keep the economic sphere relatively separate from the other two spheres. But if I take the extreme example of slavery, that might help clarify the case. In slavery, the economic sphere is in a sense fusing dominantly with the State, the sphere of rights, and in effect absorbing the slave's political rights into the process of buying and selling. This is in a sense economic competition gone wild, and just one example of how economic competitiveness, if overdone, can cause the economy to merge dominantly with the State. If you have the power to defeat someone and enslave him, the most competitively-oriented form of capitalism will not restrain you, if left to itself with no restraints from the side of democratic rights-awareness. But a more cooperative form of capitalism (say, like the highly successful Mondragon industrial cooperatives of Spain) tends in various ways to restrain the economic tendency to commodify less powerful human beings or treat them as economic objects. Slavery is only the extreme form of this commodification. The same happens in subtle, far less ugly, but still pervasive ways under the currently predominant form of capitalism, in which there are no slaves.

In the book, therefore, Steiner conceives a new form of business organization, a new more cooperative form of capitalism, which might be called stakeholder capitalism, in contrast to the shareholder capitalism of today. Many of his economic ideas are successfully in use today, on a small, but growing scale.

Steiner also focused on liberating schools and education from the control of the State (up until he started a number of schools, there were apparently no independent schools in Germany).

The book makes quite clear that Steiner would not have thought it right for there to be State entities called school boards that vote on what curriculum will be implemented in a particular school district, anymore than it would be right to vote on what newspaper or religion or creed everyone should subscribe to. For Steiner, education should be a matter of freedom and family choice among a pluralistic range of alternatives. Education should not be based on majority vote, where one size is forced to fit all in a particular school district. At the same time, Steiner was not a fanatic, and would have expected the State to maintain a few minimal boundaries on freedom of choice, such as obedience to health and safety laws in all schools, and to laws against teaching racial or ethnic hatred.

Doug says he does not understand how Steiner claims to have some knowledge of the mind of the proletariat, and Doug says this goes unexplained in the book. Doug himself explains, sarcastically, that it appears to be a mystic gift. Unfortunately, once again Doug has done Steiner an injustice. Steiner alludes in the book clearly to the fact that he taught for years in a working men's college. Doug seems to have missed the allusion, which might be more understandable, had Doug not been so careless with everything else in the book. As a speaker and teacher Steiner, it should be noted, was extremely popular with the workers at the school, so much so, that he was invited to give a speech to thousands of them on the occasion of a Gutenberg anniversary of some sort. Those who ran the school, on the other hand, were doctrinaire Marxists. It was a time of revolutionary ferment, not far from the time of the Russian Revolution, and because Steiner disagreed with Marxism in many of its tenets, and refused to tow the party line or go along with the Marxist leaders disregard for spiritual and intellectual freedom and their efforts to muzzle him, Steiner was eventually pushed out of the school.

Doug suggests that those who want to 'impose' Steiner's social theories on society should start building gulags for all the millions who will have to die if they refuse to go along. But in this case, Doug is himself truly behaving like a little dictator, because Doug is imposing his own prejudices dictatorially on Steiner's book, which has virtually nothing to do with what Doug says about it. Steiner was adamant that his social ideas were not of a type that could be 'imposed' from the top down. He explicitly says in the book: if there are mistakes here, then let them be found. And he says that in part because he was all too aware of the kind of dogmatism Lenin and his many sympathizers in Europe were capable of, as Lenin and his followers in Russia were already at that time censoring and banning books.

Contrary to Doug's absurd misreading (if he even read more than a few pages), the threefold articulation of society was something Steiner saw as an almost endless process that had begun in ancient times and would probably continue for thousands of years into our future. In ancient Egypt, for example, the three spheres were fused. The early Pharoah was ruler of the State, god and high priest of the religious/cultural life, and owner of everything and everyone in Egypt. With Greece and Rome, the three sectors become more autonomous, though still overlapping in many ways that we today would consider terribly unjust. If we jump ahead to the late middle ages, feudalism begins to break down, and there is thus a certain growing separation of economic life from the state structure. And so on, through history the threefold articulation wanes and ebbs, taking now two steps forward, now one step back, progressing unevenly over time.

If we consider the present, campaign finance reform and lobbying laws may help, however slightly, to insulate the State from economic power's attempted manipulations. Also today, many people are struggling to establish a right to school choice for families, which would make the cultural sector a bit more independent of the State. And so on. It is an infinite, and infinitely complex process that cannot be imposed like some utopian plan overnight. Steiner knew this very well.

Another way of understanding the threefold idea: In theocracy, the cultural sphere (in its religious aspect) merges dominantly with the other two sectors. In communism, the state sector merges dominantly with the other two sectors. And under today's usual form of capitalism, the economic sphere tends to merge dominantly with the other two spheres. The threefolding trend seems to point toward a form of society that gradually transcends known forms of society, by coming to a point where none of the sectors dominates, and instead each sector, independent, exerts a more indirect, legitimate form of influence on the other two sectors, so that all three sectors balance and correct each other ongoingly.

Rethinking the Basis of Society.......2000-11-07

As the subtitle, "Rethinking the Basis of Society" suggests, a fresh look is taken at the basis of social life. The question as to what healthy social forms are, or how to evolve forms that are healthy is not new. The French Revolution, the movement through feudalism to private property, Socialism, Communism, the innauguration of American style Democracy and Civil Rights, even the current battle in American public life between the proponents of "smaller government" or those clamoring for a "just society" have all the same thing in common, they would attempt to create or change social forms. Some would do so for better, some for worse reasons, "to endow the blessings of liberty", or to create situations that benefit a select few over the many.

The author, Rudolf Steiner, offers no program in this book. Rather in the spirit of the great and unfortunately late philosophical tradition, he attempts to bring us towards glimpses of what he refers to as the "primal thoughts" regarding the "body social". While some might snicker at this as arrogance, others will see "primal thoughts" for what they are - insights into the nature of man and society, insights that go to the heart of the matter, insights that in their mode of expression have not been robbed of all but a semblance of life.

Rudolf Steiner, who had worked in an educational capacity with workers, chosen by their unions to do so, had said that the "modern worker" through his education had religion reduced to idelology while being left with a mechanical mode of thought imposed on him by natural science. The effects of this are far reaching. We might ponder as to whether this hasn't created our tendency to succumb to idelology in our public life in lieu of the ability to really come to terms with this life itself. In short, that is what the entire book is about.

In the simplest terms the book posits the realm of man vs man, where each person stands on equal footing with another solely because each is human, the rights or political sphere; man associates with man to create commodities in the economic realm; and finally, the human being in his or her relationship to the creative powers as well as the powers of creativity, would constitute the cultural or spiritual sphere. The monolithic modern state dominates all three spheres creating an ill society. The political powers that be as well as the economic powers that be are either colluding or each trying to overtake the other to the detriment of all.

Steiner's thoughts are not always easy to grasp. His thoughts on the "aging" of money for example, are for myself particularly difficult. On the other hand, his lucid thoughts both as to why human labor is not a commodity, and then how to liberate it from the stranglehold that the economic sphere presently has on it, are nothing if not brilliant.

A Dreary Tedious Read.......2000-11-03

The apparent purpose of this book is to address "The Social Question." What this question is, is never explained. Perhaps in 1923 when it was first published everyone knew the "social question" that was on all lips. It is unfortunate that it was not explained to the reader in the new forward.

The book is short, but its stream-of-consciousness style makes it almost unreadable. The author has a theory that man is composed of three basic parts, (body, spirit and soul), and that, therefore, to create as ideal a world as possible, the scope of intra-human dealings should also be separated into the equivalent of these three "spheres" (the economic, the spiritual and the political). How all human dealings can be perfectly delineated into these three spheres, each totally separate from the others, is not explained. All skepticism is headed off as being un-objective, uninformed or already discredited (we have not adopted his ideas, and it is not a perfect world, ergo: any ideas except his are discredited). His arrogant, all-knowing attitude combined with the knowledge of the disastrous results of the implementation of similar "social solutions" since this book was first published make it a dreary and depressing read.

Steiner seems to believe that the common man is yearning for some perfect pattern by which to live his life and that once presented with such a theory will eagerly alter his interactions with his fellows to fall into line with it. All of his conclusions depend upon this being the case. He frequently refers to his knowledge of the mind of the proletariat. How he has this special knowledge is not explained. It seems to be a mystic gift. Having been a working man all of my life, I believe that he is wrong on all counts. The working man does not deeply ponder philosophical questions of how society should be structured, nor does he seek to alter his own consciousness to fit in with the conclusions he would arrive at if he did. As is the case with all other "social scientists", Steiner believes that man is on the verge of evolving a new consciousness. The frightening aspect of such beliefs, when they come into fashion with those with the power to implement them, is that when people do not exhibit such an evolution they must be slaughtered by the millions.

Steiner's ideas, like the thousands of other abstract philosophical musings down through the ages of how best to order human affairs, are intellectually interesting, but before these ideas are imposed on society, I suggest that those who would implement them familiarize themselves with the mechanisms of coercion and terror, and that they begin building the gulags for the poor unfortunates who do not understand his complex theories.

If the reader has an urge to delve into the mystical meanderings of another human mind, and has the patience to re-read each sentence and paragraph several times to divine its meaning, and is a collector of obscure philosophical theories, this can be an interesting read. To me it was a tedious exercise with no real value.

Amazon.com

In The X-Files episode "The Erlenmeyer Flask," FBI agent Dana Scully shows some bacteria to microbiologist Anne Carpenter, who pronounces them extraterrestrial: containing different DNA nucleotides than those found in Earthly organisms. But like the hapless redshirts of Star Trek, scientists who uncover extraterrestrial evidence have shortened life expectancies. Indeed, Carpenter is soon snuffed out in a highly suspicious car crash. But the real scientist on whom she was based, University of Massachusetts virologist Anne Simon, remained as scientific advisor to the popular program: she is the "X-Pert."

In her book, Simon describes the scientific basis of various X-Files episodes, and writes about some of her behind-the-scenes work putting the Scully into Scully. Sometimes it gets a little difficult to keep track of when Simon is describing an episode and when she's talking about cutting-edge science, but that's part of her point: "The life of a research scientist is filled with mysteries as complex as any that appear on The X-Files. We are Scullys." Simon knows that this show, for all its paranormal apparatus, gives a taste of the thrill of real science, enough to be inspiring a new generation to follow in Scully's footsteps. --Mary Ellen Curtin

Book Description

Could an alien organism really survive a centuries-long trip on a meteor and remain virulent enough to attack a human being? How would a scientist know she was peering at a microbe from another planet? What's the possibility of a genetically mutated monster actually developing?

In a gripping exploration of the facts behind the science fiction that has enthralled millions of X-philes, Anne Simon -- the respected virologist who comes up with the science for many intriguing episodes -- discusses telomeres, cloning, the Hayflick limit, nanotechnology, endosymbionts, lentiviruses, and other strange phenomena that have challenged the intellect and threatened the lives and sanity of America's favorite FBI agents. With Simon's extraordinary gift for explaining complicated, cutting-edge science in a light, accessible style, and her behind-the-scenes commentary on the development of various plot lines, The Real Science Behind the X-Files will appeal to science buffs and X-Files aficionados alike.

Customer Reviews:

A witty and intelligent guide.......2006-09-22

Simon writes wittily and intelligently about a number of subjects, all of which have been dramatized on the hugely popular television show "The X-Files." There have been other books about the show, episode guides and the like, but for my money this book is best.

Dummies Guide to Science.......2006-03-30

I bought this as a bargain book but it is worth the full price! The author writes in a knowledgeable yet humourous style which makes absorption of the subject matter easy for non-scientists, and less than 40 pages into an information packed book I have learned such a lot already. I rated it 4 star because I would have liked to see a glossary at the back and colour photographs would have made a very interesting book moreso. For example, what do the sea slugs that prefer to try to eat each other before taking the alternative option of having sex look like? Other reviews here tell you that the book is based on science fact and fiction touched upon in the X-Files so I don't need to go there. Read it, learn, and laugh. There is nothing funnier than real life.

Simply Wonderful !.......2005-04-24

I love the X files and I'm a mixture of Mulder and Scully with regard to their beliefs. But after reading this book, I think I have become a scully!This book is so lucid and simple in its explanation of certain "paranormal" phenomenon. The author does a wondeful job combining biology and humour to explain to the lay person that not all things are paranormal and that if you do a little scientific research most of the things out there will make sense. All my knowledge on DNA, chromosomes, cancer comes from this book !Though she herself admits that not everything you see on the X files can be explained by science, most of the things that happen on a macro scale in the X files happen on a micro scale in real life. Genetic mutation is a reality, a virus surviving an cosmic travel is plausible, and so on. Finally, for those of you who are deceived by books written by the layperson/idiots/quacks, read this book and you will become fascinated as to what science has to offer.

For the Scientist and Non-Scientist.......2000-09-24

I came upon this book at the house of a friend and couldn't put it down.

It is a wonderful read and, to a non-scientist, an entertaining and clear look at some of the scientific mysteries of the universe.

This is a perfect book for a graduation present and for anyone with an interest in brain-sucking worms, aliens and mutating organisms. I recommend it highly.

Way More Entertaining than a normal biology textbook..........2000-09-19

Sexual tension aside, the coolest thing about this show seems to be the questions it poses about nature and science as we know it. And being a molecular biology student, I always get a kick out of shooting down the supposed theories that the show's characters spout out. It's hard sometimes to figure out if Chris Carter and the powers that be are really serious about certain phenomenons/ideas. This book clears it up nicely. Dr. Simon is completely knowledgeable about these topics and presents the information with much more gusto than your typical molecular biology textbook. I'd rather be tested on her book come final exams, but such is life! :)

The Real Science behind the X-Files: Microbes, Meteorites, and Mutants

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The Real Science behind the X-Files: Microbes, Meteorites, and Mutants
Anne Simon
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000VSEMEG

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Real Science Behind the X-Files: Microbes, Meteorites, and Mutants
Anne Simon; Foreword Chris Carter
Manufacturer: SIMON & SCHUSTER
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OLMULM

Book Description

Discover how you can take advantage of the most rapidly growing form of e-commerce.

Created by Amazon.com in 1996 as a way of generating sales through referrals from linked Web sites, affiliate selling has quickly mushroomed into one of the biggest sources of e-commerce revenue. In fact, experts predict that, within the next few years, affiliate sales will account for as much as 25 percent of all retail e-commerce. A major reason for this is that anyone with a Web site can start earning commissions by becoming an affiliate, and directing visitors to other sites that actually sell something.

Written by pioneering experts in the field, this comprehensive guide clearly shows how to plan, implement, and manage a successful affiliate program on the Web. Helmstetter and Metivier detail the various types of affiliate programs and explain how to choose one that fits your goals. Individuals will learn where to register for free Web pages, how to build a virtual storefront, and how to add affiliate links to their sites. Merchants will discover how to start an affiliate program, extend their marketing reach, utilize third-party tools, and much more.

Get hands-on advice and guidance on how to:
* Select the right affiliate program
* Implement the required technologies
* Manage content development
* Analyze traffic trends and drive traffic to a site
* Avoid pitfalls and costly mistakes
* Maximize commissions by refining the product mix, placement, and display

Customer Reviews:

Don't Waste Your Money.......2006-08-06

This book is copyright year 2000. Think about it! I just bought this book and I threw it away. I can't belive other people are selling this book on amazon. The title should be History of Affiliate Selling pre-y2k. There is No usable information in this book,Unless your are a history buff.

I have found the Bible on the business.......2005-09-05

Ignore all naysayers. This book is a comprehensive resource and the perfect introduction for those of us new to the industry. Well done!!

Incredible book!!.......2003-06-30

This is one you cannot miss! Well written, easy to digest, and so very eye-opening. It makes you want to read every book Helmstetter writes.

A Good Place To Start.......2003-03-21

I have to say that I had high hopes for this book. However, once I received it, I was dissappointed. Everything that is in this book can be found on the Internet.

While this book does provide a lot of information, if you have researched Affiliate Selling at all...anywhere else...you probably already know what's in this book.

Having said that, if you are looking for a place to start to learn about Affiliate Selling, this may be it. This book is written for the person who knows absolutlely nothing about Affiliate Selling. It goes over places to sign up with and defines what Affiliate Selling is.

One of the first and still possibly the best.......2002-09-28

Released in early 2000, this was one of the first books about affiliate programs and it still sets the standard. While it didn't predict the demise of the dotcoms, this book is still very relevant. For the beginner, its basics and useful tips are exactly what you need to get started. But for the advanced reader, its unique and prescient predictions about where things where things are going are VERY interesting. (If you replace some of the book's references to no-longer existing companies with the newer term "XML Web Services," you have what amounts to a book that was written 5-8 YEARS ahead of its time! For instance, the authors were completely accurate in their prediction of the return of the importance of the individual/small site, a notion which was heresy in 2000 when the web was totally dominated by massive funded companies competing using millions of dollars from their IPO war chests. I credit the authors with this foresight and find their other 50,000-foot-level insights to still be fresh, insightful, and completely unique among the books I've seen in this category. This aspect makes the book required reading for anybody who thinks they know anything about affilate programs today.

The only drawback of this book is that many of the examples sited in the directory of affiliate programs are no longer around. But the authors do reference other affiliate program directories which still exist and that is really all you need to know to find suitable programs today.

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