Westerns Books

As a PhD student teaching global strategy and international business, I like this book, not only for its comprehensive theoretical framework, but also for its openness for a series of debates on globalization. The theoretical framework can help students analyze the complex global business environment. More importantly, a series of debates can open their eyes, and can help them build more skills to deal with challenges in a globalizing world (think about the current buzz on offshoring and outsourcing).

Many textbooks attempted to teach students how to arrive at "correct" answers. They just tell students what is already known, and do not describe the sorts of problems that the professional may be asked to solve and the variety of techniques available for their solution. This textbook deviates from the rest of pack, because the author tries to integrate many new fronts (and yes, even debates!) in the academic and practitioner world (see the long list of references) and cultivates a "global mental set" based on his rich experience in many countries. What is most refreshing is that the author does not give a single answer or simple evaluation for many questions, but provides many possible approaches to widen the reader's mindset. In fact, every chapter has a beefy section devoted to "Debates and Extensions," with no given conclusions.

Even vivid business cases will fade quickly and be forgotten in this dramatically changing world. So a set of "divergent thinking skills" will play a more important role in helping students develop long-term capabilities in their career success. Through this book, students will learn how to recognize and evaluate many problems to which no unequivocal solution has yet been given, find an arsenal of techniques (industry-based view, resource-based view, and institution-based view) for approaching these problems, and develop "global mental sets" to judge the relevance of these techniques and to evaluate the possible solutions.

The ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi once said: "Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day; but teach him how to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime." Truly, this exciting book may teach our students how to fish!

I'm presently a student studying International Business and Marketing at a local university. This review is based on the copyright 2006 edition.

The real-world examples are extremely out of date for a global business book. For example, the interactive case 1.1 states 2000 annual report figures for GN Netcom. Another example, mentioning Yahoo! back in 2001. We all know how this competitive marketplace has changed dramatically over the past few years, and in fact changes every 6 months. When I am paying $113 for a textbook that publishers push out a new edition every year or two, I expect my money to go towards updates in the examples that are used. I realize that strategic principles don't change and can be applied towards any case in time- but this author charges a premium on a book that should be at least half the price.

Second, the structure and layout of this book is horrible. It does not break out the key points or core concepts from this rather blandly written book. The end of chapter questions are not intuitive enough, and lack the depth that a textbook should require. There is also not enough use of diagrams to illustrate the points in the text.

Third, this book is printed in black and white- another cost savings that should not justify the high price. It reminds me of reading textbooks from 15 years ago. This book will definitely be sold back at the end of the class.

So, if you are a teacher- please seriously evaluate this book before you require students to purchase it. I'm fortunate that I am taking another strategy class and there is enough overlap that I can just skim over Global Strategy by Mike Peng to fill in the gaps that I miss in the other book. A far better recommendation- Crafting and Executing Strategy by Arthur Thomson Jr., etc. Fellow students, I feel your pain if you have to read this book.

As a professor, I have used several books for International Business classes and I have to say there are Global Business books that should have been titled as International Politics or American Business. This book has a good balance between country analyses such as EU regulation, privatization in emerging economies, and company perspectives such as entering into foreign countries, creating synergy between divisions. The cases cover companies from a lot of countries; they provide enough information to complement the chapters but are not too long so that it's easy to read through. My students and I enjoyed this book very much!

This is by far the best written business textbook I read in college. The book offers a very wide variety of real-world examples of the different strategies and actions explained in the book. These examples span all kinds of companies, from large MNE's to small businesses based in developing nations. The text is written very straightforward and the book seems to flow well from chapter to chapter. I was lucky to have Mike Peng as my professor in international business, because he devoted as much attention to his students as he did to his textbook.

An excellent guide to understanding an important Buddhist writing. Down to earth with a practical running commentary, I find it equally appealing as A Course in Miracles and de Mello's timeless book, Awareness. All three stand tall in helping us make sense of and survive in this sometimes "crazy" world in which we live.

No Time to Lose reads like a compassionate literary analysis of sacred prose, Pema takes us through stanza by stanza Shantideva's inspired work from the 8th century, revealing the cultural and spiritual relevance and sharing what she's learnt along the way, leaving plenty of room for us to also experience and apply its meaning in our own lives. Pema is well studied and an empathetic teacher who encourages us to try methods that she's tested some even as simple as copying down one or more of your favorite Shanitdeva's verses and reading it when we need to rekindle and reaffirm purpose. Here are some of my favorites:

On Transcending Hesitation:

"Just so and for the benefit of beings,
I will also have this attitude of mind,
And in these precepts, step by step
I will abide and train myself"
3.24

On Enthusiasm:

"Therefore leaving everything that is adverse to it
I'll labor to increase my perseverance
Through cheerful effort, keenness, self-control
Through aspiration, firmness joy and moderation."
7.32

Pema says for example about firmness that with commitment and steadfastness we can connect with and find confidence in our basic goodness which is our birthright as human beings. Pema provides ways that we can work to eliminate addictive behavior which she describes as `like licking honey on a razor's edge' (ouch!)

Reading books like this we see that the truth has not changed over the centuries; it merely awaits our committed response, as the concluding line to Shantideva's work challenges us,"Concern for others is the way to heaven"

I have always liked Pema Chodron's short easy-to-read essays.
This book is fatter than any of her books. The chapters are
uncharacteristically lengthy. I have not read the whole book,
but I will probably spot read it. An interesting feature is the
poems included in each chapter. They are surprisingly different
to Pema's work. I'm not sure if I like this feature or not. I
am a Pema Chodron fan, however, and her books have always given
me solace in this difficult world. "No Time to Lose" is worth
reading -- the title, at least, is like a gentle whip to our
flaccid brains.

I am discovering a whole realm of wisdom of the ages. She is commenting on an ancient rule of life in a whole new way...I have been reading other, older commentaries, from other cultures, in translation. Here, an American woman is sharing her Western version...and it illuminates the others.

Easy to ready. Well worth it!

Pema Chodron's book is not for everyone Unlike some of her more popular books, this text stays closer to tradition: it is a line-by-line commentary on an ancient text, "The Way of the Boddhisattva." I bought it not knowing quite what I expected: but what I did find was nourishing food for the journey: support for staying open-hearted and compassionate in a global time of confusion and suffering.

Brought it for a class have not used it out of those confines but good for what I brought it for.

This is an excellent chronological overview of the art, music and architecture of the Western world. It's well written and the color illustrations are well chosen and helpful. All in all, it's a good way to brush up on a few thousand years of cultural history in a short time.

I haven't used the book yet, but I think it will work out very nicely for me. Plus, I bought it at a lower price than I would have been able to from my school's bookstore.

The book was in very good shape and was sent out in a very timly manner. However, if you are a student who is planning to get this book for your class I might not suggest doing so. This book is the professional edition which does not come with the access code for the RIA website for tax research. Which you might need for class assignments and projects.

Time is at a premium on vacation. I feel that we will see some great views in Glacier using this book and stay within our vacation time period. Thanks for writing this with all the details given. Very helpful.

Best Easy Day Hikes for Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks is a bit misleading as a title. While there are easy hikes, some are far from it. For example, one hike is nine miles long with a 1200-foot climb while another is over 14 miles long. Fortunately, the distances and elevation changes are clearly marked in the description so it is easy to select those you are willing and able to tackle while leaving the others for the more adventurous. There are also maps for each hike but it sometimes took me a while to use them. The actual trail wasn't always well defined within the larger area portrayed on the map and I often found the trailheads especially difficult to spot. It was not a major problem as I always worked it out in the end but it is an area that could use a bit of improvement.

There are 28 hikes listed and they are broken down into 5 geographic areas of the two parks. My wife and I did 2-3 hikes from each area and found the descriptions to be both helpful and largely accurate. The book is small enough to easily fit in a hip pocket and held up very well during a full week of heavy usage. Color photos would have been a nice addition but that would have made the book both larger and heavier which is not ideal for a pocket guide. Overall, this was a great purchase at an extremely reasonable price.

Its construction is not as durable as one would like for a reference to carry with you while hiking, but what can one expect for that small an asking price? However, the descriptions and maps for each hike are easy to understand--even for the novice hiker. 25 easy hikes are included in the book, with distance, degree of difficulty, time required, and elevation change included. There are no pictures in the book, but still its very well done.

This books brings into light fundamental findings about mass incarceration. Studying the causes and the consequences of the imprisonment boom in the US. Western demonstrates how mass incarceration increased socio-economic inequalities in American society, and particularly for African-Americans. He brings evidence that the prison boom is the product of economic and political changes, rather than evolution of crime rates (crime rate actually decreased). Western supports his claims with evidence he compiled and produces compelling tables and figures. In one of his most important findings, Western demonstrates that the economic expansion of the 90s was actually overstated because the poorest layers of the population had disappeared from statistics while incarcerated (this thesis was developped in an article with Becky Pettit). Therefore, the seemingly good performance of US economy compared to European economies has to be reassessed in the light of mass incarceration: regulated economies might not be the cause of unemployment.

Chapter 7 "Did the prison boom cause the crime drop" is probably the most difficult and controversial one. Western examines claims of Levitt and Spelman that increasing incarceration reduced crime rate, and demonstrates the lack of evidence for such a claim. Western considers that incarceration rate and crime rate are actually unrelated and mass imprisonment is the result of economic and political factors.

Bruce Western has stepped into the realm of public sociology, I feel, with this excellent book. This is a well-written, thoroughly researched, book that is accessible to scholars and others alike. Even though the book teems with tables, figures, and analysis, Western presents them without relying on the reader to interpret regression coefficients for meaningfulness, yet also appends many of the chapters with methodological clarifications just for those kinds of people.

Western presents what is essentially a political book without a political tone. The data speak for themselves, and it is very difficult to think that, after all the work put into this, that he incorrectly attributes so little of the decrease in crime trends to the prison boom (and the absurdity of the cost/benefit for its effect on the decrease). It does seem, however, that he echoes the racial claims of Loic Wacquant in the final chapter, but that's only for a brief moment.

Western also excellently argues and shows off the immense disconnect between crime rates and corrections policy; although only a portion of one chapter, this is a significant point to make. If our policies do not reflect what criminals are actually doing, well, why are we doing it?

My only concern with this book involves Western's "all or nothing" approach to showing the economic/social cost of the prison boom. His analyses show the wage gap, parental gap, and other penalties suffered during and after release by prisoners. He astutely points out the selection bias in unemployment and wage estimates in minority populations due to leaving out the far-more-likely-to-be-incarcerated blacks. However, his analysis in later sections, where he shows the change if none of these people were in prison (to prove the selection bias argument), is one based outside of reality. First, there will never be nobody in prison; second, his own data show that prisoners are of a different background than nonprisoners (such as the "dropping out" of the bottom that artificially raises the mean wage for blacks), so it's hard to estimate where they would fit in among family and work if they were released. Many of them would remain unemployed as well. I understand that this is some of his point, but the difficulty lies in the picture painted, where we exist in a world where the prison boom did happen, Western argues what we would look like if none of the prison boom happened, and the real effect of that is somewhere in between. He is unfoundedly optimistic about the work and family choices (and chances) in these sections of the book. It doesn't change his argument about the problems of the prison boom, however. It merely muddles the otherwise fantastic clarity of his book.

This is a book that can appeal to all sorts of scholars, researchers, policy analysts, and even those who merely wonder what direction out prison policies have taken us. An excellent, excellent work.

This is a book the policy makers and students and everyone in-between would be well served by reading. It can be a little repetitive at times, but the author makes his points well. One of the strengths of this book is that through painstaking but necessary detail in the analysis, the author shows how incarceration damages the lives of those already affected by inequality. Most authors draw correlations, but Western has been able to detail how it is not just the characteristics of those who go to prison that are responsible for recidivism, but that the process of being in prison actually exacerbates the already existing problems in social and human capital that offenders have. I would have liked the author say more about being discerning with crime policy and who should go to prison. There are some people who belong in prison, but this fact seems to be lost in the amount of evidence that is detailed in this book. This however, does not take away from the quality of the book.

The author also does a very nice job in explaining the relationship between the crime drop in the 1990s and the increase in incarceration - increased incarceration is not related to a decrease in crime. The author explains how a 66% increase in incarceration was associated with only a 2- to 5% decrease in crime, at a cost of over $50 billion clearly making the point that incarceration is not an effective means of reducing crime.

My only complaint is that the author does attack Republicans a bit much early on in his book which I believe to be counterproductive. If the author would like Republicans (those who he claims make the worst crime polices) to implement better crime policy, than he should not scare them off but rather, make them think the ideas he is espousing are their own. Just an idea.

Good book, read it.

My favorite part was when Jack and Annie figured out that the book they had was written by Slim Cooley.

This was a very great book, because it was a good story.

Annie & Jack find out that there's a rattlesnake in a ghost town and they have to hide from some people. And they find a piano that's playing all by itself. And we don't know what ...was playing it. It's a surprise for you, because you might find out. And I might find out too, because I have it at home. I have a lot of Magic Tree House books at my house. ...

My 1st grader hates to put it down, he would rather read Magic Tree House books, than play video games. He even reads them to his class and explains the story for show and tell. In his kindergarten class the teacher would also let him read the Magic Tree House books out loud, not to give her a break, but to promote reading out loud. Great books!

I'm a children's reading specialist and author (Teaching Kids To Read for Dummies). I use these books with kids who are really starting to take off with their reading and consistently get great feedback. Kids love the Magic Tree House series so if you're looking for great gifts or a bunch of books to keep your reader hooked, buy the lot.

The book where Jack and Annie are warped in Wild West and sees a ghost!

Don't be misled by the occasional discouraged student, this is an important work that must be read by someone seeking to understand the nature and history of the social sciences.

This is a real classic in the history of anthropology, published in 1922, and unlike another classic from the same decade, Coming of Age in Samoa, it has worn well, too. This is where modern ethnography begins. Malinowski tells us how to do ethnography, in no uncertain terms, as he explains Trobriand kula expeditions. I found it to be a delightful read and I was continually amazed at the intellectual sophistication of his work, given its age. I believe I learned more about ethnography from this book than from any other I have ever read, and I have been a professional anthropologist for 30 years. It is, I must warn you, a long book, and I doubt that many will be willing to read it from stem to stern, but I think every anthropologist should study the introduction at least. It is perhaps the "sacred charter" for the ethnographic project, complete with felicitous phrases such as the "ethnographer's magic," "the imponderabilia of actual life," "the native's point of view," and "the hold life has." In addition, it is certainly essential reading for anyone interested in magic, because it is as much about magic as it is about kula exchange.

I assigned this book to a junior-level college class in ethnography, but they weren't as pleased with it as I was. Many of the students understood the importance of the book, but most also found it tedious, dull, repetitive, hard to follow, and definitely too long.

It had some writing in it, but overall a good deal for the price. Thanks

87 years after the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted and after the the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution Enslaved Americans gained thier freedom.

Before the civil war Abolitionist were the Advocates of change in America the struggle to gain ones freedom from the experiences of slavery in the south is told from the true experiences of Fredrick Douglass. From Slavery to the Struggle for freedom to escape is the story told here, but also the story of survival to activism in the Abolitionist movement to change America.

During the nearly 100 years after the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1787 Black America finally found Freedom, But between Slavery and Freedom was the struggle of the freedom fighters of the Revolutionary Abolitinist Movement to bring slavery in America to an end. This is the story of the virtues of a victim of Slavery turned into a revolutionary success story, This is the story of Fredrick Douglass.

As a political junkie, I watch several news and commentary television shows. On the day that Barack Obama was declared the nominee of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States, black journalist Eugene Robinson was speaking. He said that we should all stop for a minute and appreciate the significance of this event. In the early 1960's black people had a very difficult time voting and in the southern United States, whites who killed blacks were generally acquitted if brought to trial. Now, there is the very real chance that a black person will be the next president.
One of the greatest assets Obama has is his incredible gift for speech and communication. He is extremely articulate and is capable of delivering his words in a manner that resonates. I was privileged to attend one of his rallies and was even able to ask him a question.
When blacks were slaves, they were property, nothing more. If their owner was dissatisfied, they could whip or even kill their slaves with impunity. Therefore, to truly appreciate and understand how far things have come in the United States, it is necessary to read some of the descriptions of how slaves were treated.
This is one of the best accounts of the horrors of slavery ever written. Douglass was one of the first articulate blacks to appeal to whites. He was even the vice presidential candidate of the Equal Rights Party in 1872. The presidential candidate was Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president of the United States.
Douglass describes the brutal and indiscriminant treatment that a slave was forced to endure. When a slave showed any sign of independence, the goal of the white supremacists was to break them by any means necessary. Mothers and fathers were separated from their children, food was withheld and physical mistreatment were all weapons in the arsenal of the slave-breaker.
In this moment of the triumph of racial equality, it is an excellent look back to read the writings of Douglass. It gives you a perspective on how truly historic the nomination of Barack Obama is and will continue to be.

The Narrative is another book, like Hiroshima, that ever person should read. The in-depth look into Douglass' life shows how slaves were treated during the 19th Century. It explains why the struggle for freedom that led to the American Civil War and why it was such a brutal confrontation.

"I expose slavery in this country, because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death." Frederic Douglass

Frederic Douglass tells us the REAL story about slavery in early America. From the first page to the last, I was totally transfixed. There are so many things to admire about this great American. On top of being brilliant and brave and benevolent and broad-minded, etc... what I truly admire about this amazing soul was the fact that he is able to tell us his story sans bitterness. For let me tell you, if the majority of us had to endure one iota of what this man went through... Let's just say that those saccharine sweet saga's like "Gone with the Wind" left a few pertinent things out!

This is one hell of a powerful story! The brutalities of slavery will disgust you, but to see this beautiful soul rise above it all is something special. He is the most important figure in nineteenth-century black American literature and a man that merits more attention than he gets. This is a magnificient achievement, an important work of art.

Very highly recommended!