Don Thompson – författare

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 astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.This book is the first to look at the economics and the marketing strategies that enable the modern art market to generate such astronomical prices. Drawing on interviews with past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a journey of discovery through the peculiar world of modern art. Surprising, passionate, gossipy, revelatory, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark reveals a great deal that even experienced auction purchasers do not know.

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 lead them down dangerous paths, challenging the limits of rational thought, and culminating in unsettling discoveries about their mentor, themselves, and the fate of the world itself.