Chance is a New Orleans born and bred hustla. With no father and an absentee mother, Chance had been raised by the streets and they had created a money-making monster! Within the course of ten years, he had made a name for himself and a ton of money in the dope game. But once fatherhood became his reality, Chance realizes the stakes have heightened, and he isn’t a betting type of man. For the sake of his daughter, Chance becomes a changed man... for the most part. His evolution from the drug game to the business world has been successful thus far. Until he bites into the forbidden fruit, otherwise known as Ziggy. His mentor had always told him that curiosity killed the cat. Chance would always argue that satisfaction brought it back. Kai Cooke, also known as “Savage” to the hood, has the world by its balls and is living his life just as it should be... by his own law. There isn’t a woman or man alive that can hold any type of authority over Savage. He is the CEO of one of the biggest record companies in the southern hemisphere on paper, but in the streets, Savage is your pusher’s pusher. He is also New Orleans’ most eligible bachelor. Handsome, wealthy, powerful with good credit, no kids and no nagging baby mamas has Savage at the tip top of every woman’s hit list. There just hasn’t been any woman that lived up to Wonder Boy Kai’s standards. And then he is introduced to Zigara. What happens in the land of the unknown when worlds collide, love develops, and war ensues? Does the end undoubtedly always justify the means?

Sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS),this volume in Emerald Studies in Media and Communications features social science research on criminality, policing, and mass media in the digital age.

Meet the brothers Kazi, Taj, Zahir, and Maaz Gucciano... better known to the streets as 'The Gucci Gang.' Raised by a Muslim father and an ex-convict of a mother. Most times they were left to fend for themselves, especially when the death of their father hits home. Taj, the baby boy suffers the most from that brutal night after witnessing his father getting killed in front of him. In his mind, there was more he should've been able to do to help, but because of his demons... he can't control his anger issues, even when it comes to the women that he chooses to love. A real ladies man to those who know him, but a true thug at heart was the only way to describe him. He battles with trying to find peace somewhere in his life without his brother's always having to guide him. A little rough around the edges with the right amount of swag... he wasn't one to be messed with and always wants what he wants, even if it meant messing with something he couldn't have. Kazi and Zahir, the two middle boys and the two closes of the Gucciano brothers were inseparable and did everything together causing straight Havoc in the streets. Kazi worked in the hospital as an 'O.R. Assistant' by day and was a gambler by night. Zahir on the other hand wasn't working a job for anybody. He was content with owning his own trailer tractor company and making moves when he wanted. One thing their parent's always instilled in them was how to be a hustlers. If they didn't know how to do anything else... getting money was never one of the issues. However, getting a woman that was actually willing to ride it out till the wheels fell off was the problem. Maaz, the oldest of the Gucciano brothers could fool anyone with just one look. More so into anything supporting the black movement; underneath all of that was a true killer at heart. Maaz craved lavishness and would do whatever it took to get it. Working a job was cool and all but what he was looking for... no Boss could give to him cause he wanted to be his own. With one wife and two kids to go home to every night; a lot of times that still wasn't enough. He found himself willing to risk it all at times just for his own happiness. Everybody in the hood knew that 'The Gucci Gang' did what they wanted, when they wanted, and however they wanted... but at what cost? Follow the stories of hustling, love, and real life hood tales in getting to know these mean swag, fine, and thugged out brothers.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A striking graphic novel edition of the National Book Award-winning history of how racist ideas have shaped American life—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist. NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD Racism has persisted throughout history—but so have antiracist efforts to dismantle it. Through deep research and a gripping narrative that illuminates the lives of five key American figures, preeminent historian Ibram X. Kendi reveals how understanding and improving the world cannot happen without identifying and facing the racist forces that shape it. In collaboration with award-winning historian and comic artist Joel Christian Gill, this stunningly illustrated graphic-novel adaptation of Dr. Kendi’s groundbreaking Stamped from the Beginning explores, with vivid clarity and dimensionality, the living history of America, and how we can learn from the past to work toward a more equitable, antiracist future.

This professional book introduces marketing and luxury brand professionals to a new definition of luxury and the art of designing the ultimate luxury experience in both the physical space (e.g., in-store, hotel, restaurant) and the digital space (e.g., social media, website, e-commerce). Specifically, it offers an overview of customer experience issues and explores big five experiential strategies that can be applied by luxury houses in order to provide the best luxury experience to their customers. Themes such as quality of customer luxury experience, immersion and co-production/co-creation in luxury, creation and management, digital and immersive marketing, and innovative market research are also examined. How do consumers define luxury? Is there one luxury or several “luxuries”? What kind of luxury experiences consumers want to live? How can luxury houses design the ultimate luxury experience? More than in any other sector, luxury consumption is a response to a search for emotions, pleasure, uniqueness, consideration and greatest services. The luxury consumer wants to live luxury experiences – not just buy luxury products or services. In this way, this book presents the luxury consumption experience as a combination of symbolic meaning, subconscious processes and nonverbal cues and characterized by fantasies, feelings and fun. Featuring case studies and interviews from international luxury sectors and brand managers such as Burberry, Dior, Porsche, Breitling, St. Regis Hotels & Resorts, and Louis Vuitton, among others, this book offers both a research and management perspective on luxury experience to professionals in the luxury sector (e.g., CEOs, brand managers, marketing and communication professionals), as well as marketing professors, students, and people eager to learn more about how to design the ultimate luxury experience. Praise for The New Luxury Experience “This book provides a holistic perspective on marketing of luxury brands, offering both useful practical advice as well as illustrating important cases.” -- Ravi Dhar, Director, Yale Center for Customer Insights, Yale University “Wided Batat’s book offers a fresh, insightful and comprehensive analysis of the concept of the consumer’s experience with luxury whatever that may be. The Five experiential luxury strategies proposed by Wided highlight that luxury management should go above and beyond the design and branding of luxury goods and services. I also commend the consideration given to the younger generations’ approach to luxury and to corporate social responsibility aspects. Luxury marketers should find this book very useful indeed.” -- Francesca Dall’Olmo Riley, Professor of Brand Management, Kingston Business School, UK

COCAINE COWBOYS tells the story of Ireland's love affair with cocaine since it first washed ashore on Cork's rugged coast to the billion-euro trade it has become. From Ireland's first cocaine lord and his attempts to establish a direct route from Miami to Dublin to the modern-day violence that led to the brutal dismemberment of teenager Keane Mulready Woods, the book will follow the stories and the increasing chaos that has engulfed those desperate for a slice of this modern day gold rush. Along the way it details how cocaine has woven bonds between high society and the underworld, tracing the deal that killed the model Katy French and detailing how the Kinahan Cartel and Ireland's one time richest and most influential family joined forces to wash dirty money. COCAINE COWBOYS is the definitive tale of the rise of Colombia's most famous export to become the drug of a nation.

The Irish do death differently. Funeral attendance is a solemn duty - but it can also be a big day out, requiring sophisticated crowd control, creative parking solutions and a high-end sound system. Despite having the same basic end-of-life infrastructure as other Western countries, Irish culture handles death with a unique blend of dignified ritual and warm sociability. In Sorry for Your Trouble, Ann Marie Hourihane holds up a mirror to the Irish way of death: the funny bits, the sad bits, and the hard-to-explain bits that tell us so much about who we are. She follows the last weeks of a woman's life in hospice; she witnesses an embalming; she attends inquests; she talks to people working to prevent suicide; she follows the team of specialists working to locate the remains of people 'disappeared' by the IRA; and she visits some of Ireland's most contested graves. She also explores the strange and sometimes surprising histories of Irish death practices, from the traditional wake and ritual lamentations to the busy commerce between anatomists and bodysnatchers. And she goes to funerals, of ordinary and extraordinary people all over the country - including that of her own father. 'I had joined a club,' she writes, 'the club of people who have lost someone very close to them.' And then, with her family, she sets about planning a funeral in the middle of a pandemic. Sorry for Your Trouble sheds fresh, wise and witty light on a key pillar of Irish culture: a vast but strangely underexplored subject. Rich, sparkling and eye-opening, it is one of the best books ever written about Irish life. ___________________________ 'A beautiful, insightful reflection on a very, very peculiar country's approach to the oddest experience of them all' RYAN TUBRIDY 'Hugely moving and illuminating. All of life, somehow, is here' TANYA SWEENEY, IRISH INDEPENDENT 'Moving, comforting and funny' BUSINESS POST