Oller and Giardetti provide a simple, comprehensive, and fully consistent theory to explain why some messages and images communicate more effectively than others -- and then show specialists in advertising, marketing, and high stake communications how to apply the theory in their work. With examples and illustrations that practitioners and academics alike will find understandable, they provide readers with a solid grounding in semiotics, the study of how meanings are constructed and construed in signs. In doing so Oller and Giardetti help high stakes communicators find new ways to reach and persuade others -- but speak against deceit and subterfuge. They make clear that messages must be consistent with the facts, and that the most successful communicators share one special trait: integrity. A readable, research-based, up-to-date treatment of an important emerging field of study, and a carefully developed guide for practitioners and academics alike.

"Images That Work" is about emotions, desires, ideas, and the hard objects, events, and tensional relations in the common world of space and time. It is about creating and presenting words and pictures in ways that communicate genuine substance from real people to other real people. Oller and Giardetti begin with the foundations of integrity, the glory of supreme effort, and the weaknesses of fads, fashions, and untested gut feelings. They draw examples from high stakes messages in advertising, entertainment, and other communications industries. In doing so they make clear that not only are effective messages consistent with material facts, they are also comprehensive in how they convey facts and yet concise and simple enough to fit into the time and space that consumers will devote to the message. And along the way they give readers a solid grounding in the fascinating and relatively new field of semiotics, a field that has already become well established in the academic community and which has begun to spread its influence to the world outside.

Had People magazine been around during the Civil War and after, Kate Chase would have made its Most Beautiful" and Most Intriguing" lists every year. The charismatic daughter of Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's treasury secretary, Kate Chase enjoyed unprecedented political power for a woman. As her widowed father's hostess, she set up a rival court" against Mary Lincoln in hopes of making her father president and herself his First Lady. To facilitate that goal, she married one of the richest men in the country, the handsome boy governor" of Rhode Island, in the social event of the Civil War. She moved easily between the worlds of high fashion, adorning herself in the most regal Parisian gowns, and politics, managing her father's presidential campaigns. "No Queen has ever reigned under the Stars and Stripes," one newspaper would write, "but this remarkable woman came closer to being a Queen than any American woman has."But when William Sprague turned out to be less of a prince as a husband, Kate found comfort in the arms of a powerful married senator. The ensuing sex scandal ended her virtual royalty after the marriage crumbled and the money disappeared, she was left only with her children and her ever-proud bearing. She became a social outcast and died in poverty, yet in her final years she would find both greater authenticity and the inner peace that had always eluded her.Kate Chase's dramatic story is one of ambition and tragedy, set against the seductive allure of the Civil War and Gilded Age, involving some of the most famous personalities in American history. In this beautifully written and meticulously researched biography, drawing on much unpublished material, John Oller captures the extraordinary life of a woman who was a century ahead of her time.

In the darkest days of the American Revolution, Francis Marion and his band of militia freedom fighters kept hope alive for the patriot cause during the critical British "southern campaign." Employing insurgent guerrilla tactics that became commonplace in later centuries, Marion and his brigade inflicted enemy losses that were individually small but cumulatively a large drain on British resources and morale. Although many will remember the stirring adventures of the "Swamp Fox" from the Walt Disney television series of the late 1950s and the fictionalized Marion character played by Mel Gibson in the 2000 film The Patriot, the real Francis Marion bore little resemblance to either of those caricatures. But his exploits were no less heroic as he succeeded, against all odds, in repeatedly foiling the highly trained, better-equipped forces arrayed against him. In this action-packed biography we meet many colorful characters from the Revolution: Banastre Tarleton, the British cavalry officer who relentlessly pursued Marion over twenty-six miles of swamp, only to call off the chase and declare (per legend) that "the Devil himself could not catch this damned old fox," giving Marion his famous nickname; Thomas Sumter, the bold but rash patriot militia leader whom Marion detested; Lord Cornwallis, the imperious British commander who ordered the hanging of rebels and the destruction of their plantations; "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, the urbane young Continental cavalryman who helped Marion topple critical British outposts in South Carolina; but most of all Francis Marion himself, "the Washington of the South," a man of ruthless determination yet humane character, motivated by what his peers called "the purest patriotism." In The Swamp Fox, the first major biography of Marion in more than forty years, John Oller compiles striking evidence and brings together much recent learning to provide a fresh look both at Marion, the man, and how he helped save the American Revolution.

The luminous star of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Shane, and other classic films was, as the subtitle aptly puts it, "the actress nobody knew." Jean Arthur (1900-91) kept her personal life private, disdained the Hollywood publicity machine, and was called "difficult" because of her perfectionism and remoteness from costars on the movie set. John Oller, a lawyer, tracked down kinsfolk and friends never before interviewed to capture the elusive personality of a free spirit best embodied in her favorite role, Peter Pan. Arthur herself might have appreciated his warm, respectful portrait. .,."[An] insightful, painstakingly researched analysis of Arthur's life and career raises the curtain on the complex, conflicted person behind the screen persona...Captures the special shine of a unique star who turned out to be a genuine eccentric." -Chicago Tribune