Westerns Books

I found this book to be an excellent guide when it comes to describing the entrepreneurial process as well as how to start up a business. Not only does it cover the theorectical sections of this vast subject, it also provides guidance on how to go about getting funding, encouraging creativity and innovation within a firm etc. It details the stages of a business and has a number of case studies. A great book!

This book played a significant role in shaping a business plan that attracted institutional investment for a technology start-up I co-founded in Brazil. Great book.

This book has really helped me in class. It ties into all of the other books we use and all of the discussion in class. The book is actually interesting and easy to read unlike other textbooks!

This book is phenominal. While it is an academic textbook, it really hits home to the real world. The business plan section is extremely useful and the real life company examples and case studies are quite interesting and insightful.

Dr. Kuratko's book is positively OUTSTANDING and a MUST read for anyone who is even CONSIDERING starting his or her own business. Dr. Kuratko is considered by many to be the nation's foremost expert in the field of entrepreneurship and small business management. His book blends the structure of a course textbook with excellent real-life case examples. This is, without question, the finest book that I have ever read. I keep it by my nightstand!!!

Buy this one! You WON'T regret it!

Michael

The chapters explained the concepts for the accounting class I was taking. When it came to doing the homework problems you could not go to the book to understand how to work the problems. The questions for test were not readily found in the various chapters. In my opinion this book did not work together to help me understand the principles of the book.

The book I received was exactly what I was expecting! Would definitely do business with again.

"Tourists are learning that the image of the terrible Turk is false, created to a great degree by it unfriendly neighbors. Turks are quick to remind visitors that, surrounded by Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, Georgia, Bulgaria, and Greece, they're not living in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood."

This is a direct quote.

It sounds like they're trying to say that the surrounding countries are painting an incorrect negative image of Turkey. Which is amusing, since he listed both Greece and Armenia there, which were both targeted by Turkey. Either this writing staff has no idea what they're writing and is just happy to sell books, thinking no one will double check the info, or they're Racist and opinionated. Either way, I wouldn't trust the info in here even as a rough guide on where to go.

This is a great book for those first timers to Europe. Those that don't know what to expect. It tells you what to pack, how to create an itinerary, booking flights, how to get around Europe (train, car, and boat), how to find places to stay, how to make phone calls, how to interact with the locals, etc.

This is NOT a guide book. It is a "how to enjoy yourself in Europe" book.

The previous reviewer should have taken this into account before bad mouthing it.

This book does give some pointers about the best trips one can take given certain timeframes, but does not go into detail about everything there is to see about Europe. He includes his favourite places. For more detail, pick up Rick Steve's Best of Europe 2004, or one of his country specific guide books.

After spending several months a year for 25 years touring Europe, Rick knows what you need to know about enjoying yourself there. No need to make the same mistakes, he tells you how to avoid the pitfalls.

Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door presents a philosophy that many tourists seem to lack: When in Europe, ACT like you're in Europe! This book is aimed towards those travelers that just can't quite seem to ever escape the U.S. no matter where they travel.

Rick presents a whole host of tips for seeing a Europe beyond the standard guided bus tours and airline deals. His years of experience go into his writing, giving often insightful and funny tips from sleeping overnight in the train station (he recommends sleeping in the first-class lounge to be among a higher class of hobo) to the best way to wash your clothes in the hotel sink.

This book is not all about travelers caught in a pinch, however. There's also great advice for finding accomodations in during busy season, picking the right hotel/room, and finally finding those gems--great spots in Europe that no other traveler seems to know about.

This book is not so much a guide to specifics as it is a guide to travel philosophy. Steves encourages the reader to immerse themselves in the local culture, and offers advice for the reader not sure how to do so.

Those looking for a country-specific guidebook should look somewhere else, but they should also keep this book handy to really get a feel for what Europe truly is and was.

Rick does an okay job of giving a quick overview of Europe, but sometimes forgets to "just inform" and tries to get all poetic and fancy. His description of Rothenburg does not inform me about the place, just about the wind and the leaves and his acid trip. This book will annoy you with its sporadic bursts of cheap thesaurus prose.. Rick is just not a good writer. Otherwise he does a good job of letting you know of not-so-touristy things to do in EU. The types of things he suggests are walking around and smelling things, sitting down and drinking a beer, buying a chunk of cheese and eating it on a park bench while people-watching. I don't see 18-30 year olds getting much from this book. Younger travellers might want to do more than just smell a place and get tipsy.
His writing tone seems biased; he's opinionated and sometimes makes me feel as if he gets paid to advertise shops and attractions.
Buy this book for a general overview of an Euro Trip, not as a travel guide. For more detailed info, grab a Lonely Planet guidebook.
In an effort to cater to ALL audiences, Rick, as well as oher mass market writers, tries to create ONE book for ALL types of people. Any given traveller will be interested in only 15% of this book, and toss the rest aside. The backpacker will use 15%. The high class big baller will use 15%. The middle class two week vacationer might use 10%. I would prefer to pay more for a book JUST FOR ME. (Mr. Backpacker)

This book makes you want to go to Europe.Now.Just get on the plane and GO!
I wish I had read this eleven years ago on our first trip to Italy.Since that time I have travelled to Europe on business many times and I have to agree with Rick Steves that no one ever says " every time I go to Europe I pack more".
His travel philosopy addresses peoples fears and insecurities when they are travel..."I won't have a certain piece of clothing,object when I might want it...better take it just in case" or "a less expensive hotel may be dirty ,unsafe...I know this luxury hotel will bust the bank, but its worth it for piece of mind." That kind of thing.Rick Steeves describes clean,charming hotels and pensiones which are centrally located and much less expensive than "luxury" properties. his restaurants are not dives, but great trattorias,atmospheric ristorantes popular with the locals.He is wonderfully opinionated about what to see,when to go...like having a best friend who lives there. No guidebook( and I have read them all) combines such practical advice with a travel philosophy which is positively liberating.This is especially true for older travellers who do not want to backpack,hostel, and who thought they had to stay in the "best" places, and wear a different outfit everyday. Our next trip to Italy will be with one carry-on bag each, staying in Rick Steves suggested family run pensiones and hopping on and off trains between destinations. We feel 20 years younger(and we will be 20 pounds lighter,too)

Maybe my hopes were too high due to the previous reviews, but I found it a little dull.

I loved the McKettrick's, every book I have picked up I cant put it down until I have read through, and cant wait till he next.

I love all the McKettrick Series stories, they are all different, but many of the same characters throughout. I really enjoy these type of books because it's almost like a continuation of the same story that I liked in the first place! Currently I am reading The Last Chance Cafe by the same author, and it is not about the McKettrick's, but is a wonderful story that's different but in the same style as the others.

One of the best books I have read, I have read the Trilogy and loved all three.

This is great book if you read the other two books of the McKettrick family you will enjoy it. Dont forget to read about the last or should I say first brother of the McKettrick Cowboys. Title: "McKettrick Choice".

This exceptional book is worth reading regardless of readers' specialization. A big surprise for those who don't like probability and statistics! This book could be a good introduction to Probability and Statistics with Bayesian approach. Although I cannot point out bad sections, here are some of the topics that could be improved.

Influence Diagram examples are much fewer than Decision Tree diagrams. I'd love to see more complex and elaborate decision model examples for practitioners implementing their own models.

In probability chapter, the authors implicitly assume that Pr(A,B) means Pr(AB) or Pr(A and B) where Pr() is "probability of" and A and B are some events. This is never mentioned in the book (as far as I recall), so it should be fixed for clarity. Also in the same chapter, chain rules and marginalization are not covered explicitly, yet a reader needs to use these general rules in exercises and in some of main contents. These rules are very important in manipulating probability and conditional probability terms.

Although there are few selected answers for exercises, most of the answers are not too hard and they are self-explanatory. So self-study readers shouldn't worry too much.

A curious person who might wonder what decision science and analysis is about, I recommend reading "Smart Choice" by John Hammond, et al. Less math and more compact exposition.

For further study in Influence Diagrams and Bayesian Belief Nets (BBN), a good introduction is "Bayesian Networks and Decision Graphs" by Finn Jensen, et al. There are numerous good sites for BBN on web so search them online. For probability and statistics, "Probability and Statistics" by Degroot, et al. or Feller's Volume 1 are good, which are mentioned in the textbook.

Note: I recommend this blue cover version rather than green one as the former comes with Palisade Decision Tools Suite and is published later.

There is a software with the book, which has to be used for working on the problems.(The book has no use without the software).
You can register the software only once.
If you buy a used book, you have to pay another $20 to get a new serial # to use the software.
My seller mburns1000 didn't mention about this when I bought the book and I ended up spending another $20.

Used this book in a "Making Decisions under Uncertainty" graduate class at the Business School of the University of São Paulo. This book brings all the basics for decision making theory, specifically quantitative aspects of it and comes along with the Decision Tools software that has some bugs but works ok. Using the book together with the software you will get a very good basic idea of what decision making is all about. If decision theory is important for your studies buy this book!!! I also recommend Max Bazerman's "Judgment in managerial decision making" as a complement to it because this one focuses more on the subjective piece of decision making (decision biases, uncertainty, etc, etc) which is not really covered well by Clemen & Reilly. With both, you have a very good toolset for starting to study Decision Making Theory.

Dr Clemen has provided an excellent text for Decision Analysis instruction. I have continuously surveyed the field and have yet to find a text that comes up to the standard that Dr Clemen set with his first publication "Making Hard Decisions"

I have used "Making Hard Decisions with Decision Tools Suite" as well as the predecessor text "Making Hard Decisions."


Richard D Hofler

Understanding Hard Decisions

So that you know where I am coming from: I found this book while selecting a new text for my senior "Decision & Risk Analysis" course. There are numerous books on this subject, but none are perfect: either the presentation of the subject is hard, talking way above the heads of the audience, or too theoretical, or requiring a high level of math skills, or the presentation is at a too low level, or too narrow in focus, or not covering the whole spectrum of Decision Analysis. I chose this book for various advantages it has. The technical level of math that it requires is low, yet the analysis is high. It is written in a very easy way to read, follow and understand manner. It can be used both as a textbook for a course as well as a reference. It makes use of the most common generic tool for calculating and solving problems, the Excel spreadsheet for the suite of software that comes with the book (Palisades Decision tools) are integrated with it. The book offers a rather complete presentation of decision analysis concepts and techniques: there is a whole chapter on the important topic of sensitivity analysis, another chapter on simulation; and risk and forecasting are also presented.

I find the reference section in each chapter excellent, for it helps the reader tie the literature to the concepts presented. The last chapter which gives an annotated decision analysis reading list is also very helpful. All textbooks need to have these two ingredients. It is true that numerous of the references given in the book are fairly old, but the topic is not in the fast changing computer science field, and many of the original articles and books in the decision analysis area are classics and need to be looked at carefully. (Maybe there is a lesson to learn here for those who give a minus when "old" references are included in a scholarly work.)

The book is very modern for the concepts it presents (influence diagrams - a relatively newcomer in decision analysis, issues of recent interest, such as assessment, ecology and AIDS) and because it also ties with the web. The reader is directed to the web page of the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS and this gives an important tool for keeping the knowledge presented in the book constantly updateable and broadening the spectrum of the interested reader. Another advantage: the book emphasizes structuring decision problems rather the more traditional approach to stress modeling of uncertainty and preference.

I like both the structure of the book (that follows the decision analysis process) and that of each chapter which consist of an introduction, presentation of concepts and techniques, a summary section, challenging case studies accompanied by questions referring to the concepts just presented, references, and an epilogue.

Best qualities of the book: clarity, good structure, interesting real or realistic fictitious case studies - extremely important to keep the student interested in a topic which other books present in a dry way and with just "toy" problems.

Yes, the book is rather expensive, but do not disregard the fact that it comes with a set of software tools which although a student version (with limited-size problems and expiring after a while) it can be time-unlocked for a cost. Most importantly the software does not represent a separate school-only tool, for there exist commercial standard and professional versions that the student will be able to use on real-life problems without the need to go through an additional learning curve, if willing to pay the larger, but non-prohibitive cost. Clear instructions for how to use the software is given in the appropriate sections of the book.

What I would add? A glossary of decision analysis terms, either for each chapter or, with preference, a global one at the end of the book.

A special touch: most chapters end with an epilogue. Each epilogue has a different flavor (a game, a comment on a debated case, etc.) The epilogue does not directly summarize the main "action" of the chapter. It is more like the conclusion section of a musical composition - it brings some additional intriguing element that will keep the interest of the student aroused. This is as artistic in nature as decision science must be!

Review by Ileana Costea, Ph.D. Professor of Engineering, California State University, Northridge Email: icostea@csun.edu

October 18, 2000 Los Angeles