The Promise of Private Pensions: The First Hundred Years (A Pension Research Council Book)

Book Description

The private pension is a curiosity in the modern economic environment. Why do profit-seeking companies pay retirement benefits to those no longer on the job? In this new institutional history, Steven Sass explores the rise and growth of the financial support system that today commands trillions of dollars of investment capital and supports hundreds of thousands of older Americans.

Before 1900 America's elderly derived their livelihood from simple sources. They worked if they could, relied on their children, and took charity if necessary. By the dawn of the twentieth century, however, the country was constructing a new industrial economy. Both laborers and capital were moving away from farms toward large corporate establishments. These market changes weakened family links and traditional skills, rendering workers more vulnerable to economic shocks. The elderly, in particular, fell out of step with the new mechanized and bureaucratic regime. It was in response to these dramatic economic shifts that the institution of private pensions emerged. In return for workers' long-term loyalty, employers promised to help sustain them through old age.

As Sass shows, creating the pension system proved far more complicated than anyone had anticipated. Over the last hundred years it has evolved into a complex institution driven by congressional mandates, judicial/administrative decisions, union campaigns, political debates, and the ministrations of lawyers, economists, human resource specialists, actuaries, and insurance experts. Sass traces the U.S. pension system through to the present day, exploring how our modern corporate economy is confronting the challenges of an aging population.

Customer Reviews:

Lively, straightforward, easily accessible.......2001-07-20

Sass writes engagingly about the history of pensions, which goes back only about 100 years in the United States. He discusses the family handicraft economy of the mid-1800s, how it was displaced by large industrial firms, why pensions began, how they evolved, the impact of ERISA and the creation of defined contribution plans in the late 20th century. If you want to understand the policy issues of public (Social Security) and private pension reform and how they will affect you personally in the future, I suggest you turn back to the past for starters.

Customer Reviews:

Another winner for Thomas.......2006-06-12

Eminent Civil War historian Emory Thomas has another winner with this, his first book. I previously read Thomas' book, The Confederate Nation, which, although written in the late 1970s, is still the best work on the history of the Confederacy's non-military side. This book is just as good and is one of the best of a growing list of works on Richmond. Thomas, a native of the city, writes the book in such a way that you feel like you are there in the city. He starts off with a brief sketch of the city and notes that Richmond had often led in revolutionary times. He quickly jumps to the war years and does a great job of using a variety of sources such as newspapers, diaries, journals, memoirs, secondary sources, congressional records, and the minutes of the city council to paint a portrait of the capital city. The chapters fly by in this very readable book. A very interesting book to read, easy to read, and as entertaining as history gets. Along with Ernest Fergusun's Ashes of Glory, the best book on wartime Richmond during the Civil War.

Where were you when I needed you........2000-05-08

I set off for a trip to Richmond, VA last year confident that I could pick up a copy of this useful little book while there.

I was astonished to find that I couldn't buy a copy in any of the downtown bookstores or museum shops. How I would have loved to have had this history and guide with me to make me fully aware of how each place I visited was connected to some stirring or painful act of our great national tragedy.

This book is a fine companion piece to Margaret Leech's wonderful "Reveille in Washington".

Emory Thompson has written a remarkably interesting and able history and one that no visitor to Richmond should be without.

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THE CONFEDERATE STATE OF RICHMOND: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE CAPITAL
Emory M. Thomas
Manufacturer: University of Texas Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OS16V0

Book Description

The Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) has come a long way since its first edition in the 1940s--replete with positions fueled by a wartime economy. One thing has not changed, however: for more than 50 years, the OOH has been respected as the job seeker's number one source of critical decision-making information. From aerospace engineer to water treatment plant operator, the latest edition spans more than 250 occupations, encompassing nearly 90 percent of the jobs in the U.S. economy.

The most current source of government statistics on jobs and job opportunities, the Occupational Outlook Handbook organizes a vast amount of data.

Customer Reviews:

Very good book.......2002-12-11

Although I haven't read this book in print form, I have read it online for free. It's very authoritative and full of information. The only problem I have is that it lacks subjectivity: doesn't tell you the "problems" a certain career might have or its workload.

In conclusion, every student or non-student who's just looking for a different career path will benefit from the info in this book.

Ideal reference for perosnal job and career research........2000-05-04

In its Occupational Outlook Handbook 2000-2001, The U.S. Department of Labor provides exhaustive, accurate, up-to-date information on all major jobs and occupations in the United States. This easy to use, authoritative, and definitive reference offers the most useful database of information on jobs and salaries available today. All jobs are arranged into logical clusters, making it simple to find a given occupation. The descriptions are clearly written and replete with pertinent and useful information on skills, pay, working conditions, training, educational prerequisites and more. Occupational Outlook Handbook 2000-2001 is an essential, core reference title for school and community job center counseling, and ideal for personal job and career research.

A big help.......1999-07-27

It's definitely a good book to have, if anything because it's very clearly cross-referenced. I got a lot out of it, and have been lending it out to a lot of my friends. VaultReports publishes similar stuff which is also pretty good.

this book was a necesity for finding a job.......1999-03-01

it helped me learn about meteorolog

The classic career planning resource........1998-04-14

Published every two years by the U.S. Dept. of Labor. The resource used by more career counselors than any other. Good, basic occupational information on hundreds of jobs covering over 90% of the workforce.

Occupational Outlook Handbook 1998-99 (Occupational Outlook Handbook (G P O))

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Occupational Outlook Handbook 1998-99 (Occupational Outlook Handbook (G P O))

Manufacturer: Claitor's Law Books and Publishing Division
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Labor Policy | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Job Hunting & Careers | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Job Markets & Advice | Job Hunting & Careers | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Labor & Industrial Relations | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1579801838

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Occupational Outlook Handbook 1998-99
Labor Statistics Bure Labor; Labor, U S Dept of Dept
Manufacturer: Bernan-Unipub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OJJKS0

Average customer rating:

Occupational Outlook Handbook, 1998-99

Manufacturer: U.S. Government Printing Office
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Job Hunting & Careers | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Job Markets & Advice | Job Hunting & Careers | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 016020044X

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How to Sell Your House in Tough Times
Peter Davidson
Manufacturer: Perigee
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NPYHT2

Book Description

The first biography of Joanna Lumley, one of Britain's best-loved and most accomplished actresses whose outrageous, champagne-swigging, bee-hived hedonist Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous is acknowledged as one of the great TV characterisations of the nineties. For over four decades, since she became a top model in the sixties, Joanna has remained an endlessly fascinating figure and is now regarded as somewhat of a national treasure. Meticulously researched, the book draws on interviews with relatives, friends and co-stars to produce an astonishingly revealing portrait of one of Britain's most likeable stars.

Customer Reviews:

Disappointing.......2006-08-28

This book leaves a lot to be desired. The authors are far too enamored and protective of the subject of the book to be subjective and so the book reads like a teen magazine interview. A good biography fleshs out the details but this book just reads like it was someone's school project to write about Joanna Lumley.

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Quirky, soulful autobiography

No Room for Secrets
Joanna Lumley
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Television | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0141015462

Customer Reviews:

Quirky, soulful autobiography.......2005-09-12

Joanna Lumley chooses not to go down the usual biographical route. Instead of charting the progress of her career she instead stages a kind of free-falling description of her life as she tours the rooms of her London house and allows particular objects or photographs to stir memories.

She has a particular gift for storytelling and in describing her childhood. There is a kind of gentle humor throughout which is achieved more by choosing exactly the right word to describe something rather than by jokes. For instance, she imagines a stable of horses as looking "like an equine rugby team".

Less successful are her attempts at travelog, which seem to take the form of pages culled from her diary. However, overall her technique of darting from subject to subject is enticing as we gain bizarre glimpses into her everyday life (watching tv quizzes in the kitchen) and her philosophy.

This is the most unshowbizzy of memoirs and will find favor with people who enjoy reading biographies generally rather than fans of Absolutely Fabulous, which receives scant mention.

Fringe Benefits: The Good, the Bad, the Beautiful,,,,and the O'Briens

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Fringe Benefits: The Good, the Bad, the Beautiful,,,,and the O'Briens
Donough O'Brien , Patrick Lichfield , John D. Green , and Joanna Lumley
Manufacturer: Bene Factum Publishing Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Public Relations | Marketing & Sales | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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Joanna Lumley
Tim Ewbank , and Stafford Hildred
Manufacturer: Andre Deutsch Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Entertainers | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Television | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0233999582

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Joanna Lumley-The Biography
Ewband
Manufacturer: Andre Deutsch Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Television | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Occult | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0233996214

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If you know only Patsy, you don't know Joanna!

Stare Back and Smile
Joanna Lumley
Manufacturer: Viking
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Television | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0670821748

Customer Reviews:

If you know only Patsy, you don't know Joanna!.......2004-07-07

Granted, the immeasurably-talented Miss Lumley will be forever associated with her inimitable "Absolutely Fabulous" boozehound, Patsy Stone ("...39, international beauty and fashion guru") -- but as much as we may adore Pats, Lumley's best-known role belies the fascinating and articulate woman behind the character.

From her birth in India, through her modeling years in Swinging London, through an early small-screen career including virtually every British sitcom you've ever heard of, Lumley approaches both the adventure of world travel and the drudgery of trying to make it in the business with equal good humor, and a charming mix of eloquence and intimacy.

Do not, however, expect a racy show-biz expose; while honest and earnest, Lumley is downright coy about romantic involvements (and quite tight-lipped about the birth of her son).

And that, I am happy to report, is extremely refreshing.

Book Description

In the fall of 1977, Howard Norman went to Churchill, Manitoba, to translate Inuit folktales, and there he met Helen Tanizaki, an extraordinary linguist translating the same tales into Japanese. In Fond Remembrance of Me recaptures their intimacy, and the remarkable influence that she, and the tales themselves, would have on the future novelist. Through a series of overlapping panels of reality and memory, Norman evokes with vivid immediacy their brief but life-shifting encounter, and the earthy, robust Inuit folklore that occasioned it.

Customer Reviews:

An Unrequited Love Between Two Cultures........2005-05-02

This memoir is full of reflections of the time he spent almost thirty years ago in the Arctic where he'd gone to listen to an old man tell "stories," myths, folk tales, some of which I think he made up. It is about a Japanese woman eleven years older (had the ages been reversed, it might (probably would) have made a difference) than he, who is also there to translate the same stories into Japense for a publishing concern. They formed a close relationship and he learned from her and her battle with cancer.

The old man, Frank, tells his myths and how he understood the fable of Noah and the Ark from our HOLY BIBLE. He enjoys Helen's mannerly presence, but there is friction flavored with antimosity toward Howard. He wants to make sure that he will be paid for his knowledge. Both men, young and old, are influenced by her quiet ways and intelligent interpretations. Helen discovers her illness while on this project. Howard is there for research purposes on behalf of a Michigan museum.

In 1998, NORTHERN TALES: STORY FROM NATIVE PEOPLES OF THE ARCTIC AND SUB-ARTIC REGIONS is published and it is the basis of this short tome about his feelings toward the other writer. Helen is his most "unforgettable character." He won't admit that he loved her, only that he held her on a pedestal of sorts. It is sad to read how they interrelated and helped each other to understand the old Eskimo's tales as he transcribed them into English and she in her native Japanese.

He seemed overwhelmed by the fact that they came from opposite ends of the earth and met in the cold Arctic region on a literary job. She types her notes on an old-fashioned Remington typewriter similar to the one on the cover of this book; he kept his in notebooks written in longhand. What he did reveal was the nature of their friendship of an older woman and younger male and how much it meant to him. Had she not died, perhaps fate would have been nicer.

After Helen's death, Howard went on to marry and settle in Vermont but he would never forget this lovely woman who had influenced him in many ways. He has written THE NORTHERN LIGHTS, THE MUSEUM GUARD, and others. Now this Fond Remembrance of Helen, a truly remarkable woman.

From the Frozen Land of Churchill (Manitoba).......2005-04-12

Although the title may sound like Norman is on an ego trip, he's really talking about another human being, a woman with whom he was once quite close, a woman he met, as Rex Harrison did Kay Kendall, while she was dying. Her name? Helen Tanizaki. Norman was a junior and Tanizaki a senior translator and Arctic analyst, and the two of them had met up in God's own country, Manitoba Canada, to transcribe

Did you know that both Deanna Durbin and Nia Vardalos (MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING) are both from Manitoba? Marshall McLuhan and Neil Young are others who hail from this part of the world. In the Inuit legends, Manitoba, about which Norman has written often, is derived from the sound that spirits play while beating on a "drum." Compare the word "manitou."

As Norman was to discover, there were one million filk legends on the Manitoba wind, and they had been so distorted by time and whispers that his informant, a colorful fellow, might tell Norman one version of the same story one afternoon, and that enebing he would have told Helen quite another. Howard Norman, of course, grew up to be one of the world's great story tellers himself, and this book is a bittersweet reflection of a love that didn't really "happen," but it happened nonetheless, and in her conviction of friendship for Norman, Tanizaki's name shall be long remembered, for he has written an astute memoir about her. I loved the part where Norman watches in helpless irritation, while Helen doubles over in laughter by something their Inuit informant is telling them. The truth is that Norman just isn't expert enough in the kanguage to understand Mark's quite ribald native humor. Helen never rubs it in, she merely gives him space enough for him to figure out that he isn't quite the authority his training had left him thinking he was. For out in the field, Norman was often hampered by his own inexperience while Helen, quite a bit older than he, had the benefit of many years of working and thinking and creating with all sorts of people in many cultures. Rather touchingly, as the two become closer, he asks her for a reading list of modern Japanese fiction, and she complies, saying, these books qill keep you for quite awhile (for she knew that she would be dead before he had finished all of the books).

Thus into this cold Canadian paradise crept something of the romantic, renunciatory spirit of Der Rosenkavalier. Though not everyone will enjoy this book, those of us who like a good love story, such as the old chestbnut 84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff, will find plenty to like here. Norman's understatement can be a bit annoying from time to time, but there is never a moment when we lose sight of the important threads of the story. As Helen says, "Illness tends to turn you inward. It makes you eccentric in ways you ever wanted. It's hard to explain."

Hard indeed, but Norman does his level best and that should be enough.

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