Books about Patrons from Amazon.com

Lucky, age ten, can't wait another day. The meanness gland in her heart and the crevices full of questions in her brain make running away from Hard Pan, California (population 43), the rock-bottom only choice she has.

It's all Brigitte's fault -- for wanting to go back to France. Guardians are supposed to stay put and look after girls in their care! Instead Lucky is sure that she'll be abandoned to some orphanage in Los Angeles where her beloved dog, HMS Beagle, won't be allowed. She'll have to lose her friends Miles, who lives on cookies, and Lincoln, future U.S. president (maybe) and member of the International Guild of Knot Tyers. Just as bad, she'll have to give up eavesdropping on twelve-step anonymous programs where the interesting talk is all about Higher Powers. Lucky needs her own -- and quick.

But she hadn't planned on a dust storm.

Or needing to lug the world's heaviest survival-kit backpack into the desert..
Price: $4.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

St. Elizabeth's is a home for unwed mothers in the 1960s. Life there is not unpleasant, and for most, it is temporary Not so for Rose, a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to the home pregnant but not unwed. She plans to give up her baby because she knows she cannot be the mother it needs. But St. Elizabeth's is near a healing spring, and when Rose's time draws near, she cannot go through with her plans, not all of them. And she cannot remain forever untouched by what she has left behind . . . and who she has become in the leaving.

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Price: $5.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Our Lady will inspire women everywhere to “lighten up”—in more ways than one!

As millions of women can attest, losing weight is hard work, and even the most resolute of dieters often fail. What’s missing from nearly every diet program is the support and humor women need to keep on track and lose those pounds for good. Here, Our Lady of Weight Loss—the patron saint of fat removal—comes to the rescue with miraculous motivation for all!

In this unique book, Our Lady shares her tried-and-true gospel of weight loss guaranteed to lift readers’ spirits and finally make dieting fun. A fat-free, calorie-free, carb-free, guilt-free helping of divine inspiration, Our Lady of Weight Loss is the ultimate cheerleader for women everywhere and the best friend who will keep them on course even when the brownies beckon like a siren. With the help of Our Lady readers will:
• Stay inspired with “motivational musings” and tips
• Curb their cravings and keep their creative appetite satisfied with “pious projects”
• Confess their chocolate or french fry transgressions and move on
• Indulge in healthy and simple “righteous recipes”

Part art object, part craft project, part bedside companion, and part cookbook, Our Lady of Weight Loss is perfect for any woman following a diet program and still searching for her “thinner core.” Quirky and soulful, with gorgeous four-color artwork throughout, this book will keep readers laughing on the rocky road to sveltesville and change their relationship with food forever. BACKCOVER: “Janice Taylor and her alter-ego, Our Lady of Weight Loss, give us just what we need—a lift, a laugh, and, of course, a kick in the tush. Taylor has found a unique way to fuse weight loss with creative expression, and she puts it out there to help others with wit and warmth."
—Jami Bernard, Film Critic, N.Y. Daily News, and author of The Incredible Shrinking Critic.
Price: $1.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $6.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Most models of party competition assume that citizens vote for a platform rather than narrowly targeted material benefits. However, there are many countries where politicians win elections by giving money, jobs, and services in direct exchange for votes. This is not just true in the developing world, but also in economically developed countries - such as Japan and Austria - that clearly meet the definition of stable, modern democracies. This book offers explanations for why politicians engage in clientelistic behaviours and why voters respond. Using newly collected data on national and sub-national patterns of patronage and electoral competition, the contributors demonstrate why explanations based on economic modernization or electoral institutions cannot account for international variation in patron-client and programmatic competition. Instead, they show how the interaction of economic development, party competition, governance of the economy, and ethnic heterogeneity may work together to determine the choices of patrons, clients and policies..
Price: $28.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Learn how to do powerful, practical magic when you use candles and call on the saints in Reverend Ray T. Malbrough's The Magical Power of the Saints.

This book can be your personal guide to help you call on the saints as your spiritual allies. You will learn how to work with seventy-four different saints through the use of "seven-day vigil candles" (saint candles), prayers, psalms, herbal baths, and more. For example, you would call on Saint Benedict (whose candle color is white and day of the week is Saturday) to help end fevers, heal sick animals and more. You might call on Our Lady of Charity (whose candle color is yellow and day of the week is also Saturday) for protection of the home and family, to bring a new lover, or to obtain better finances. But The Magical Power of the Saints includes much more:

Find out which saint can best help you for any situation, along with that saint's specific day of the week and color of candle

Learn rituals for fifty-seven different situations-such as attracting good fortune, strengthening your marriage, and improving your business

Use divination to discover which ingredients will summon the proper   powers to help you in any specific situation

Locate passages in the Bible that support the practice of divination

Learn how to use prayer to honor your departed ancestors and communicate with them

Discover the best way to prepare and use the saint candles

Recite the correct biblical psalm for your specific need

Read messages in a candle flame to see if your prayers will be answered

The Magical Power of the Saints includes over forty-five illustrations of saints to help you in your work. For powerful, practical magic, get The Magical Power of the Saints.
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Price: $4.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In The Patron's Payoff, Jonathan Nelson and Richard Zeckhauser apply the innovative methods of information economics to the study of art. Their findings, written in highly accessible prose, are surprising and important. Building on three economic concepts--signaling, signposting, and stretching--the book develops the first systematic methodology for assessing the meaning of art patronage and provides a broad and useful framework for understanding how works of art functioned in Renaissance Italy.

The authors discuss how patrons used conspicuous commissions to establish and signal their wealth and status, and the book explores the impact that individual works had on society. The ways in which artists met their patrons' needs for self-promotion dramatically affected the nature and appearance of paintings, sculptures, and buildings. The Patron's Payoff presents a new conceptual structure that allows readers to explore the relationships among the main players in the commissioning game--patrons, artists, and audiences--and to understand how commissioned art transmits information. This book facilitates comparisons of art from different periods and shows the interplay of artists and patrons working to produce mutual benefits subject to an array of limiting factors. The authors engage several art historians to look at what economic models reveal about the material culture of Italy, ca. 1300­1600, and beyond. Their case studies address such topics as private chapels and their decorations, donor portraits, and private palaces.

In addition to the authors, the contributors are Molly Bourne, Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio, Thomas J. Loughman, and Larry Silver.

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Price: $28.44 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A patron of art since the 1930s, Peggy Guggenheim, in a candid self-portrait, provides an insider's view of the early days of modern art, with revealing accounts of her eccentric wealthy family, her personal and professional relationships, and often surprising portrayals of the artists themselves. Here is a book that captures a valuable chapter in the history of modern art, as well as the spirit of one of its greatest advocates. 13 photos..
Price: $7.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Lives of the Saints provides vignettes of men and women recognized officially as saints of the Roman Catholic Church, accompanied by prayers and arranged according to feast days..
Price: $8.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The rivalry between the brilliant seventeenth-century Italian architects Gianlorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini is the stuff of legend. Enormously talented and ambitious artists, they met as contemporaries in the building yards of St. Peter's in Rome, became the greatest architects of their era by designing some of the most beautiful buildings in the world, and ended their lives as bitter enemies. Engrossing and impeccably researched, full of dramatic tension and breathtaking insight, The Genius in the Design is the remarkable tale of how two extraordinary visionaries schemed and maneuvered to get the better of each other and, in the process, created the spectacular Roman cityscape of today.

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Price: $4.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]