This is the third edition, updated to 2022. In The Curious Economics of Luxury Fashion, economist and bestselling author Don Thompson offers insights and fascinating examples in discussing the intriguing and fast-evolving world of luxury fashion. Why does one handbag sells for five times the price of another that looks and feels pretty much the same? How does a luxury label justify a runway show costing many millions of dollars, when most of the outfits paraded will never appear for sale? ...

Acquiring contemporary art is about passion and lust, but it is also about branding, about the back story that comes with the art, about the relationship of money and status, and, sometimes, about celebrity. The Supermodel and the Brillo Box follows Don Thompson's 2008 bestseller The $12 Million Stuffed Shark and offers a further journey of discovery into what the Crash of 2008 did to the art market and the changing methods that the major auction houses and dealerships ha...

Why would a smart New York investment banker pay twelve million dollars for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock’ s drip painting No.5 1948 sell for $140 million? The first book to look at the economics of the modern art world, and the marketing strategies that power the market to produce such astronomical prices, this surprising and revelatory book explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what m...

Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock's drip painting No. 5, 1948 sell for $140 million?Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with...

The Telenizer is a science fiction short story written by Don Thompson. It was first published in 1953. The story is set in a future where television technology has advanced to the point where it can manipulate and control human minds. The protagonist, a young man named Jack, becomes addicted to a new television program called "The Telenizer." As he watches the show more and more, Jack begins to lose touch with reality and becomes increasingly isolated from the outside world. Eventually, h...

High Dragon Bump by Don Thompson.

Although Time may be that Heraclitean river no one can step into twice, it's not really linear. Rapids churn in some places and it scarcely flows at others, almost stagnant. And the current often sideslips into eddies that circle indefinitely. At least Time seems to function like that as it flows through the memories of a long life. The Eightieth Year, although in the form of a journal comprising numbered entries for fifty-two weeks, follows the river through all of those variations, allow...

The Telenizer by Don Thompson.

Don’s John JokesBy: Don ThompsonDon Thompson has always loved telling jokes. He used to have an uncle who owned a barber shop and would visit him there a couple times a month. They would sit and tell jokes. When his uncle passed away, Thompson’s sister asked him to tell one of their jokes as he was being laid to rest. Don’s John Jokes is a collection of the jokes he has been telling for many years.About the AuthorDon Thompson is a World War II veteran. Althou...

Allison Walker is an enigma. It seems that the bright young owner of Rain City Yachts has another side to her personalityone irresistibly drawn to the field of medicine. Allison is diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder and committed to mandatory participation in a clinical trial at a prestigious psychiatric institute. But when she discovers her own misdiagnosis and the true source of her medical knowledge, she learns something even more disturbing: the institutes executives are hid...

Places Not Here is the concluding book of the Stellar Woods trilogy. In this final adventure, young adults Tom and Katie Morrison are called back to Seattle for the reading of the will of their departed mentor, Dr. Spencer Blankenship.When the facts of Dr. Blankenship's demise don't add up, Tom and Katie must decide whether to ignore the disturbing details and return to their safe and successful academic careers, or to risk further investigation. Their decisions le...

Worlds of If' was a three-time winner of the Hugo Award for best science fiction magazine. 'Worlds of If' discovered many talented writers who would go on to dominate genre fiction. This is the second in our 'Worlds of If' series, with even more memorable stories from its tremendous run. '2BR02B' by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 'Do Unto Others' by Mark Clifton 'Robots of the World! Arise!' by Mari Wolf 'Disqualified' by Charles L. Fontenay 'Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?' by Kenneth O'Hara 'Vital Ingr...