Reflections Of A Man

Stanley Marcus was known the world over as an innovative marketer and retailer with a refined sense of taste and style whose leadership transformed his family's Dallas clothing store, Neiman Marcus, into a globally recognized arbiter of fashion. However, his refined sensibility was also expressed in a very private passion for photography, shared only with family and close friends. Marcus's daughter Jerrie Marcus Smith and his granddaughter Allison V. Smith celebrate this passion in Reflection of a Man, a representative selection of the thousands of photographs Marcus shot on business trips in Europe, on vacations in Mexico, and during family celebrations. These photographs underscore what we already know about the man in terms of an eye for elegance, a preoccupation with merchandising, and an enthusiasm for the enjoyment of life, but they also reveal a talent for capturing the purity of a moment and memorializing instances of beauty. In addition to the photographs, Oscar de la Renta, the couture fashion designer, relates his experience with the master of the art of the sale; Jack Lenor Larsen, the dean of modern fabric design, pays tribute to his long friendship with Marcus; and Roy Flukinger, Senior Research Curator of Photography at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, critiques Marcus's photographs.

What It Means to Be a Man begins with a discussion of machismo set in the context of the social construction of masculinity. Ramírez presents his interpretation of what it means to be a Puerto Rican man, discussing the attributes and demands of masculinity, and pointing out the ways in which strength, competition, and sexuality are joined with power and pleasure. He examines the erotic relationships between men as part of the expressions of masculinity, and analyzes how the homosexual experience reproduces the dominant masculine ideology.

Philosophical reflections of a distinguished business owner over time.

In Give a Man a Fish James Ferguson examines the rise of social welfare programs in southern Africa, in which states make cash payments to their low income citizens. More than thirty percent of South Africa's population receive such payments, even as pundits elsewhere proclaim the neoliberal death of the welfare state. These programs' successes at reducing poverty under conditions of mass unemployment, Ferguson argues, provide an opportunity for rethinking contemporary capitalism and for developing new forms of political mobilization. Interested in an emerging "politics of distribution," Ferguson shows how new demands for direct income payments (including so-called "basic income") require us to reexamine the relation between production and distribution, and to ask new questions about markets, livelihoods, labor, and the future of progressive politics.

Originally published in 1961. Arthur O. Lovejoy, beginning with his book The Great Chain of Being, helped usher in the discipline of the History of Ideas in America. In Reflections on Human Nature, Lovejoy devotes particular attention to influential figures such as Hobbes, Locke, Bishop Butler, and Mandeville, tracing developments and changes in the concept of human nature through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He also discusses the theory of human nature held by the founders of the American Constitution, giving special attention to James Madison and the "Federalist Papers."

Reflections of a Black Man is a story of a boy named Chris who grows up to be a respectable man. Through his growth, he encounters various obstacles that will either break him or make him a stronger person. Chris learns that manhood and respectability is not a right that is given, but it is something that he has to earn through sweat, tears, and hard work. During his journeys through life to find himself, Chris ends up in several life changing binds that only he can resolve. In the end, family, prayer, and lessons learned will ultimately see him through.