This accessible, smart, and expansive book on shopping's impact on American life is in part historical, stretching back to the mid-19th century, yet also has a contemporary focus, with material on recent trends in shopping from the internet to Zagat's guides. Drawing inspiration from both Pierre Bourdieu's work and Walter Benjamin's seminal essay on the shopping arcades of 19th-century Paris, Zukin explores the forces that have made shopping so central to our lives: the rise of consumer culture, the never-ending quest for better value, and shopping's ability to help us improve our social status and attain new social identities.

From a leading constitutional scholar, an important study of a powerful mode of government control: the offer of money and other privileges to secure submission to unconstitutional power. The federal government increasingly regulates by using money and other benefits to induce private parties and states to submit to its conditions. It thereby enjoys a formidable power, which sidesteps a wide range of constitutional and political limits. Conditions are conventionally understood as a somewhat technical problem of Òunconstitutional conditionsÓÑthose that threaten constitutional rightsÑbut at stake is something much broader and more interesting. With a growing ability to offer vast sums of money and invaluable privileges such as licenses and reduced sentences, the federal government increasingly regulates by placing conditions on its generosity. In this way, it departs not only from the ConstitutionÕs rights but also from its avenues of binding power, thereby securing submission to conditions that regulate, that defeat state laws, that commandeer and reconfigure state governments, that extort, and even that turn private and state institutions into regulatory agents. The problem is expansive, including almost the full range of governance. Conditions need to be recognized as a new mode of powerÑan irregular pathwayÑby which government induces Americans to submit to a wide range of unconstitutional arrangements. Purchasing Submission is the first book to recognize this problem. It explores the danger in depth and suggests how it can be redressed with familiar and practicable legal tools.

We live in a culture increasingly influenced by porn. Sex is used to sell everything, from household products to cars to electronics. Provocative and popular fiction like 50 Shades of Gray is encouraging people to play with a fire that could destroy their homes. We supposedly stand against sex trafficking, and then we turn around and increase the demand through our music, clothing, and movie choices. These decisions to entertain ourselves with increasing shock factor reveal that most audiences are currently numb to the publicizing and proliferation of what was once deemed private. Amidst this sex-satiated culture, I want to give a realistic view of the life of someone who once allowed herself to be sold. In sharing my own story and journey into and out of the sex industry, I want to educate others in a way that encourages us to stop buying sex in all forms and instead to honor one another as whole people. I want to encourage us to consider the woman who has been made a sex symbol so that we learn to honor both who she was before and who she might become if given an opportunity to succeed in a life outside of selling her body. I have encountered many men and women who were put into this life by their pimps and boyfriends. Others entered it while trying to escape their own trauma and trying to gain some control or dignity in their own lives. Yet others truly believe they can do nothing else. I want to offer you a glimpse of the mentality of a young girl who thought this was her best option in life. As a woman who was once purchased, I am often placed into one of two categories: I am either victimized as a survivor of human trafficking, or my trauma is dismissed since I chose to enter the commercial sex industry. This is an unhelpful and extreme distinction-especially when some of those fighting to end trafficking are also those who justify their use of pornography, brothels, strip clubs, and escort services because they believe all these women choose to be there. Choice is not always a simple matter when it is derived from decades of compounding trauma, addictions, and lack of quality guidance. For this reason, I want to show you what life looks like when a person says yes to being sold.This book is not meant to leave readers in despair but rather to depict enough of my own journey through deception to invite appreciation of the freedom possible with complete surrender. I want to show how hope gives birth to new life, when a true chance to heal and opportunities to flourish are given. No one is too far gone. However, no one can complete the journey in isolation. In this sense, I hope my story can also aid those who want to mentor other women on their journeys of healing and redemption. My desire is that the full presentation of my background-and the way it fed into my choices-can help offer understanding about the many layers of hurt that are present for women leaving the sex industry. More than the woman's body has been wounded, and many memories that stretch much further back than her start in the industry will need to be opened up and healed. Freedom does take work. But it is an infinitely good and worthwhile work. I personally engaged in my deepest healing efforts at the Refuge for Women in Kentucky. And there, I discovered a place to be truly safe for the first time in my life. I remember lying in my bed each night and saying to myself, "I am safe. I am loved. I am secure." Because of the hard work I did there, I can still say and mean those words today, many years later. If you are called to help a woman walk this road, please let my story invite you into awareness of the layers involved in both her hurt and her healing. And whether you read this story as a mentor or a mentee, let it encourage you of the good and the freedom yet in store.Ultimately, I hold to the unshakable belief that there here is hope and help for everyone. I hope my story confirms this for you.

Xander Pascalis can buy anything...including a wife! At millions of dollars, Helen is lavishly expensive. But Xander thinks he knows a good deal when he sees one.... However, when Helen refuses to share his bed, Xander is forced to take his headstrong wife to his private Greek island to tame her into keeping her marriage vows. He wants value for money: she will give him the wedding night that, so far, she's denied him....

“[Kellerman] does for the American cop what P. D. James has done for the British mystery, lifting it beyond its genre.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch “No one working in the crime genre is better.” —Baltimore Sun In Gun Games, the sensational Faye Kellerman once again showcases Peter Decker of the LAPD and Rina Lazarus, arguably the most popular husband and wife team in contemporary crime fiction. A rash of shocking adolescent suicides at an elite Los Angeles private school is at the heart of this gripping thriller that also focuses on the troubled teen Decker and Lazarus have brought into their home: Gabriel Whitman, the son of a psychopath. Herself one-half of one of noir fiction’s true “power couples”—along with her husband, acclaimed mystery writer Jonathan Kellerman—Faye Kellerman once again demonstrates how American police procedural writing is done to perfection with Gun Games.

Committee Serial No. 1 -- Part.3. Contains letters of transmittal from Senator Key Pittman and S. P. Gilbert,Jr., Acting Secretary, Treasury Dept.

The twentieth book in the hugely popular Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series from New York Times bestselling author Faye Kellerman