A detailed explanation of how Visa and MasterCard work and are regulated.
A debut economic textbook breaks down the world of electronic payments.
A payment system is one in which funds are easily transferred between lenders and borrowers, or payers and payees. The two largest international payment systems are Visa and MasterCard, both of which are built around branded credit cards. These systems have become increasingly important in the internet age, where card members are able to buy, sell, lend, and borrow around the world. With this book, Artimovich seeks to offer an explanation of the ever more complex workings of these payment systems, which, despite their ubiquity, are not clearly understood by most people. “Strangely enough, too many professionals in the e-commerce market don’t have a clear idea as to how the card payment systems work,” writes the author at the beginning of the volume. “Perhaps my foremost task in this textbook is to encourage young minds to create new technologies in the field of card payments.” Though Artimovich’s focus is on the way these systems exist online—and particularly the experience of using them in Europe—he offers a fairly wide-ranging introduction to payment systems in general, from the origins of credit cards in the early 20th century to the ways Visa and MasterCard continue to evolve in the present day. Particular areas of interest include the rules that govern payment systems and issues of fraud and security. By the last page, the author hopes readers will understand all the forces at work behind their next online purchase. Artimovich proves to be well-acquainted with his topic, and the book succeeds in showing readers just how much they didn’t know about international payment systems. But the author’s prose is often clunky and he rarely provides basic term definitions that would greatly aid readers in following his argument. Large sections of the text are quoted verbatim from a (better written) book by Visa’s founder, Dee Hock, while later sections adopt the legalese of regulations (“A Chargeback must be processed no later than 120 calendar days from the last date that the Cardholder expected to receive the merchandise or services”). There is certainly much useful information to be gleaned here—especially by those already familiar with the industry—but the volume is a bit too opaque and inconsistent to function as a practical textbook.
A detailed explanation of how Visa and MasterCard work and are regulated.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 239
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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