change Books

I bought this book for a friend who wanted to get into pharmaceutical sales, but she had no outside sales experience. She read the book cover to cover, referenced it daily, and in 3 months, she had her dream job. Thank you Tom!

If you are even remotely thinking of breaking into the pharmaceutical or medical sales industry - BUY THIS BOOK!! Because of this book I just got hired with Johnson & Johnson as a pharmaceutical sales rep. I had no prior experience in this industry and I beat out 3 other qualified candidates because I followed Tom's advice to a T. I highly recommend this book if you are seeking a job in the pharma or medical sales industry. It is an extremely difficult task to get hired in this industry but once you do you will be so proud of yourself and on your way to a fulfilling life-long career.

Pharmaceutical sales can be an intimidating industry. Tom Ruff's knowledge will point you in the right direction towards success.

I greatly enjoyed the book and have suggested it to many on my friends that are looking into entering the field of pharmaceutical sales. I thought it was extremely beneficial to read to get a flavor of what a pharmaceutical representative do on a day to day basis and how to get into the field. Read this before revising your resume and interviewing for positions it can also save you time in the end if you decide Pharm sales isn't for you.

It is so important for job seekers to get advice from people actually working in their desired industry. If you are interested in a career in pharmaceutical sales, Tom Ruff is the ideal advisor. Tom is the founder of Tom Ruff Company, a recruiting company specializing in the pharmaceutical industry. His book provides a true insider's guide to the entire process of finding and winning a job in this popular and competitive field.

What I particularly like about Tom's book are the many tips that only someone in the pharma industry would know. He shares lists of common interview questions, big mistakes to avoid, inside info on the largest pharma companies (and the differences between them) and sample resumes and email messages that will help readers stand out from the crowd.

This book is a must-read for anyone seeking a job in pharma sales--or even those who are thinking about doing so.

Lindsey Pollak
Author, "Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World"

ALL THESE BOOKS ON OIL AND GAS ARE SAME STORY TOLD OVER AND OVER AGAIN. GOOD TO TALK ABOUT IT I GUESS. BUT...

FIRST, THE USA IS, ERR, COMMITTED TO THE DEFENSE OF ISRAEL. THE OIL IS THERE OR RIGHT NEXT DOOR. THE OWNERS OF THE OIL AND GAS DON'T LIKE JEWS.

SECOND, MOST OF THE OIL AND GAS DEPOSITS ON EARTH ARE CONTROLLED BY GOOFY RELIGIONS AND PEOPLE LIKE HUGO CHAVEZ.

THIRD, TO GET FREE OF OIL AND GAS YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE CHANGE THE WAY YOU LIVE. A LOT.

FOURTH, YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO RE-DESIGN YOUR CITIES SO THEY ARE NOT CAR AND TRUCK DEPENDENT.

FIFTH, YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO KICK THE OIL AND GAS INTERESTS OUT OF YOUR GOVERNMENT. THEY RUN THE CIRCUS...

SIXTH, TO DO ALL THESE THINGS YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE. LITERALLY. NONE THESE THINGS WILL CHANGE OR GO AWAY VOLUNTARILY.

SEVENTH, YOU HAVE TO START TODAY. YOU ARE ALREADY VERY VERY LATE...

Imagine that you are the next president and you want to make a major address about oil. You have all your advisors give you briefing papers and suggestions. That is the way "Freedom From Oil" reads. It has lots of good information, but it does get a bit repetitive at times. Overall, I found it very useful.

First off, if the US implemented an energy plan EXACTLY as described in this book, I think we'd be 1000% (yes, a thousand percent) better off than we are today in 10-20 years. If we'd implemented something like this 10 years ago, I hate to think how many fewer problems we'd have regarding oil consumption and the need to import foreign oil, "defending" the oil supply in the Middle East, etc.

NOTE -- I'd add global warming to the list, but after reading the book "The Chilling Stars" (recommended reading) I'm willing to take it out of the equation for now, though CO2 does far more harm than just warm the planet.

My only issue with the book is that it doesn't go far enough, suggests specific incentives to the big 3 auto companies that strike me as a bailout (rather than providing incentives for ANY company building cars of the future), and misses entirely in some areas (there's no suggestion of helping fund development of biodiesel from algae, as one example).

I tend to steer clear and far away from any type of political book. My disinterest stems from the obvious bias and propaganda that these types of political figures tend to bring into their views and writing. The viewpoint and rambling on and on bores my racing mind. "Freedom From Oil" was written from a completely different perspective and point of view that it took me by surprise. I was fully engrossed throughout the entire book and often referenced previous views and opinions as I read through Sandalow's ideas.

The format of this book was written as fairly short, but highly detailed documents written to the next President of the United States by the various Directors and Secretaries within the President's office. Each perspective detailed the pros and cons of how to eliminate the United States' addiction to oil. The forward thinking approach brings in thinking from all factors which would affect the people and corporations of the US.

These views facing the problem of oil addiction include memorandums from the President, his Counselor, the Secretary of Energy, the National Security Advisor, the Council on Environmental Quality, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Economic Council, with several articles profiling American viewpoints.

Solutions to the oil addition problems are presented by the Secretary of Transportation, the Secretary of Agriculture, the US Trade Representative, the Council of Economic Advisors, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and the Secretary of State. Additional viewpoints include profiles and ideas presented by American citizens. The range of solutions presented include Biofuels, Plug-in Cars, Fuel Efficiency, Coal, Hydrogen, Smart Growth, Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and Diplomatic Strategy.

Finally, a compilation of all the problems, solutions and discussion is provided via a press release and "The President's Speech to the Nation." The format presented in this book not only held my attention but strengthened my belief that all Americans should work toward finding solutions to our current energy crisis and work toward using cleaner fuels and be willing to sacrifice convenience for what is best for not only the United States, but also the world.

In the heat of the 2008 Presidential campaign, voters in the United States think they are experts on what it takes to make a president. Though we voters may be deluded enough to assume that we know what we are doing, author David Sandalow has actually produced a book that seeks to address the issues various and sundry that pertain to oil.

In "Freedom From Oil: How The Next President Can End The United States' Oil Addiction" [McGraw Hill, 2008, 272pgs], Sandalow presents a series of actual policy papers, as if they were going to be handed directly to the next president.

The non-fiction book is broken into three parts in which he sets up the problem, outlines solutions and supports the final decisions. Then, he provides provides policy papers, memoranda to the president, frequently interspersed with profile pieces that illustrate aspects of the issue of oil and its place in our world.

It is a given that oil will eventually run out. It's more likely, though, that climate change will stop us from using oil before it runs out. Sandalow's recapitulation of the problem we face is suitably foreboding. The various solutions he raises, analyzes and sets into their places--in proportion to their ability to help us solve our energy problems--was sobering.

Sandalow shows how cars that are plugged-in are a great idea. They use energy at night when power plants face low demand. Sandalow presents the ideas of biofuels, ethanol, switchgrass and shows how these are not a panacea because of greenhouse gases. He describes the abomination of using liquefied coal--in which a huge amount of green house gases are released just to liquefy it. He reveals the shocking inadequacy of the hydrogen car. (Sandalow doesn't say hydrogen is hopeless but obviously from the book it won't be practical.) Throughout, Sandalow presents these presidential briefing, policy position and memorandum papers in a neutral professional tone, as if they really were about to be handed to a president.

As all of us watch the presidential primary season of 2008 and wait for the left-handed candidates--Barack Obama and John McCain--to be nominated, we are keenly aware of what is required to be a president. Therefore, we actually are quite qualified as garden variety voters [assuming you listen to NPR or watch some news] to assess these briefing papers. We know the issues and I must say it's refreshing getting some new facts to make my personal arguments keener.

To a reader used to a contiguous narrative, the rather disjointed table of contents and the early chapters comprised of policy papers was confusing.

This book is recommended because of the vast amount of digested information it presents in regard to the consumption of oil, our future energy situation and what to do about it.

As we fritter away time waiting for the next president, Greenland is sending rivers of melt from ancient snowfall down underneath the Greenland ice sheet, speeding it to the Atlantic. As we debate raising CAFE standards or bicker about gas taxes, Antarctica is cracking huge icebergs into the ocean.

[ Tom Hunter is a Manhattan-based writer ]

We are on the edge of an amazing future. What changes lay ahead? What skills will you need to be successful and happy? Will you be ready?

Alvin and Heidi Toffler are futurists. They have studied and written predictions of the future for decades.

Their first book, Future Shock was released back in 1970. It was thoroughly researched and critically thought through. Many of their predictions came true.

Revolutionary Wealth also makes predictions about the future. Since their past books were proven to be accurate on many topics, it's fair to assume that their latest book will provide many insightful thoughts about the future.

Here are just a few of the topics: Waves of wealth, the edge of knowledge, the gospel of change, implosion, capitalism's end game, running tomorrow's money and much more.

The book is a page turner and provides a peek into what can and probably will happen depending on the paths that we as society take.

Here are some key excerpts from their work.

The Wealth System

"If the First Wave wealth system was chiefly based on growing things, and the Second Wave on making things, the Third Wave wealth system is increasingly based on serving, thinking, knowing and experiencing...The new wealth system demands a complete shake-up in the way increasingly temporary skill sets are organized for increasingly temporary purposes throughout the economy. Nothing is more deeply fundamental to the creation of wealth."

Knowledge

"In each of us there is a crowded, invisible warehouse full of knowledge and its precursor data and information. But unlike a warehouse, it is also a workshop in which we--or, more accurately, the electrochemicals in our brains--continually shift, add, subtract, combine and rearrange numbers, symbols, words, images, and memories, combining them with emotions to form new thoughts."

Cross Disciplinary Knowledge Required

"More and more jobs require cross-disciplinary knowledge, so that we find increasing need for hyphenated backgrounds--"Astro-biologist," "bio-physicist," "environmental-engineer," "forensic-accountant.""

A New Dawn

"Living at the dawn of this century, we are direct or indirect participants in the design of a new civilization with a revolutionary wealth system at its core. Will this process complete itself--or will the still incomplete wealth revolution come to a crashing halt?" 1

The message is clear. Those who will succeed and prosper in the coming years will have the following skills and backgrounds:

* Decision making
* Knowledge
* Schooling
* Experience
* Reasoning
* Intuition
* Common sense
* Confidence

These skills and background can be boiled down to three words: Critical Thinking Skills. With these skills you will be prepared for whatever challenges the future presents.

As with his book Future Shock and other books he has written, Toffler has an amazing ability to look at the very beginning of trends and then extrapolate a future out of those trends. His predications come from interviews with many world experts. Toffler then uses his critical thinking skills to integrating everything he has learned. From this knowledge he constructs a vision of the future. Not only that, he provides options we should consider to create a positive future for ourselves.

Knowledge is power:
This is a must read book to gain a glance into what tomorrow brings! It can be positive if we take the right steps...there is hope!




The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide to: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking

Amazon appears to have eaten a review I created when this book first came out. I have been a fan of the Tofflers since I was first introduced to their work in the 1970's.

Although they were ahead of everyone else with their book Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Power at the Edge of the 21st Century, which I described at the time as one of the top five books on the future of knowledge, ever; with this book they are dotting the i's and crossing the t's, connecting disparate dots such as I list below, and confirming that we are indeed at the beginning of a completely new era, at the very beginning of massive innovation that will make the early Silocon Valley days look like the Stone Age.

I'll take a look at my notes and see about expanding this review later, but for now the best value I can render is to list other books that reinforce what the Tofflers, intellectual parents to us all, are affirming.

I strongly recommend that you not limit yourself to this book, but go back and get PowerShift as well as the books listed below, which are but the top of the pyramid. We the People are coming back into power, and our first priority must be to help the five billion poor create infinite stabilizing wealth so that we might fulfill Buckminster Fuller's vision of being able to use existing resources and existing technology to create a good life for all--what his partner, Medard Gabel, in a forthcoming book, calls "seven billion billionaries."

See also:
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization
Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era
The Knowledge Executive
Information Payoff
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
Five Minds for the Future

Very rarely do I recommend my own books, but in this instance, since they wrote about me, I want to highlight just one of my books:
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest

Alvin and Heidi Toffler have added their best book yet to their impressive repertoire of futuristic books. This book is a must read for anyone interested in thriving in the 21st century. It is not about getting rich. It is about understanding the mega changes that are happening in the world and about to happen. Very informative!

For readers who are not familiar with Alvin Toffler, this is not another one of those "how to get rich" titles. Alvin Toffler is known for writing about social and economic trends. In one sentence, this book tells us what is happening in the world, what the future will bring and what won't work anymore.

In this ambitious book, the Tofflers provide numerous examples of how institutions like governments, regulatory bodies, trade unions, schools and courts fail to handle disasters and social, economic changes because they have not evolved fast enough to catch up with the little revolutions that have been going on.

The concept of "prosumer is revisited and expanded. Apparently, recently developments have provided more support for their concept of consumers producing what they and other potential consumers consume - often without pay. An interesting concept.

Though there is plenty of competition in every industry, the authors seem to believe that in a knowledge-based economy, opportunities to attain wealth are limitless as one person who uses his knowledge to derive wealth does not deprive another person of the ability to use his knowledge to obtain wealth.

That seems to be the basic theme of the book, but the Tofflers didn't stop there. There are 50 chapters full of examples of institutions that screwed up, unlikely success stories, experts who were wrong and so on. It's a brilliant book, but Revolutionary Wealth is a little complicated and certainly not something you can read for relaxation.

You may find my review biased as I have been a BIG fan of Alvin Toffler since his first book.

As with all of his/their books before, Alvin and Heidi Toffler have surpassed themselves again with the new concept of revolutionary wealth. The book has been written over a period of time, which is evident once you read through the book. Many events described as 'recent' have occured at least 2-3 years ago. But this is no way reduces the importance of the book.

Tofflers talk about knowledge as a form of wealth and how this new economy wealth defies all the established economic thoughts and how the society - nay world - is trying to grapple with the new concept.

A MUST READ for anyone who wants to understand the changes happing around them. Extremely thought provoking and immensly un-put-able book.

Millionaire in 365 Days: The Daily Plan to Get There

A revealing expose....and so simple an idiot can fix it...but wait the unions do not want that....so we have a mediocre system that is beat out by many other countries...a good education on the educational SYSTEM.

While Hirsch does a good job of listing most of the trends in public school education, he does a truly dismal job of explaining why they don't work. In fact, even though I lean towards more traditional learning, I thought he was so off base with his reasons as to *why* this or that educational technique doesn't work, that actually I found I agreed in several cases with his opponents, which I don't think was the aim of his book, lol.

For example, he doesn't like project-based learning, or cooperative (small group) education. He feels they're inefficient. Well, they're not inefficient if done correctly, where each student is assigned an equally difficult and important task, and the teacher keeps on top of things, individually grading each student independently of the project, and the students in the group are similar in terms of intelligence, skill, and work ethic.

However, what *really* happens, and why they don't work (which he does not mention) is that most teachers use these techniques during class as babysitting devices so they can grade papers or do other paperwork or go on break. The smarter and/or harder working students, because they don't want their grades to suffer, end up doing all of the work and the slackers skate by with a good grade because the teacher only grades the total project. The smarter students also wind up actually teaching the other students for a good deal of the school day, which gee, I thought that was what TEACHERS are paid to do.

He even fails to list that the best reason to continue with the "traditional" classroom where teacher talks and students listen is that it is often the most efficient way to get information across to large groups of people. How could he miss that?

He mentions that in Asian classrooms students are typically given an overview of exactly what they will learn in a class session. Well, go to any seminar and probably 95% of them are taught that way, because you have really large groups of people and only one instructor. Most lower-division college classes (especially those held in large auditoriums) are taught this way.

However, these classes only work if students are well-behaved (often not the case in K-12) and everyone in the class is assumed to have the ability to learn the new information with little or no follow-up (which again is often not the case in K-12). In these types of classes, the teacher (or indeed, anyone who can read the lesson plan) simply presents the information, which is hardly "teaching", by any stretch of the imagination.

The chief value in this book lies primarily in the glossary, which provides a wealth of buzzwords for the homeschooling parent to jazz up any district-required homeschool record-keeping.

There are printing errors on pages 121, 124, and 132 of the paperback edition - including repeated and truncated sentences, misplaced quotes, and truncated paragraphs. I have contacted the publisher, and advise others to check before they purchase. I found the same errors on three paperback copies, from three retailers, in two states.

I love the premise of this book, and have found a clean, hardcover copy without errors.

The only thing more inflated than grades in today's public schools is self-esteem. How a student feels about what he thinks he or she is learning is considered far more important than whether that child is learning anything at all. Considering the millions of public school graduates who can only be described as functionally illiterate, it's apparent that almost half of public school students aren't learning much of anything. As Hirsch explains, this is because the government's education system is no longer concerned with teaching facts (historical, scientific, grammar, reading & writing skills, etc.). They're more concerned with kids having fun, which ensures no one's feelings get hurt by getting a low grade on a test or writing assignment. His book makes a strong argument for classical education where content knowledge from core courses like English, math, science and history is emphasized, rather than modern educators' bloated rhetoric of "learning about learning" or teaching "critical thinking skills" when students don't have enough facts to think clearly about anything. It is a fact that public school students who are taught using classical rather than modernist teaching strategies perform better on standardized tests, but the elitists progressives who support these modern strategies will argue that standardized tests only reflect one aspect of what a child is learning. I say these tests also point out what a child is NOT learning, which is all the more reason to support a return to classical education. And since public schools are controlled by the above modernists, that's not likely to happen, which is why I strongly encourage parents to remove their kids from public schools right now. Put them in a privite or Christian school, most all of which follow classical teaching methods, or you can home school your kids yourself using a classical curriculum. It's not as difficult or expensive as you might think, but it's far cheaper than what it'll cost you to leave your child in the government's care.

A long time ago, a well known theorist of education - John Dewey - decried certain "dualisms" in education. Schools, in other words, should not put all of their educational eggs in one basket by focusing either SOLELY on teaching factual recall or SOLELY on teaching students how to think. Schools should do both and avoid the idea that the two can be seperated. Thinking, in Dewey's mind, was dependent on factual knowledge and factual knowledge was useless without a mind trained to think about it.

Hirsch's book is written amongst a steady tide of educational thought that has forgotten this most basic insight. Most educators today believe the primary goal of education to be promotion of critical thinking and creative expression at the expense of fact-b ased instruction, which is often decried as 'mindless repitition of facts.' (In my education classes, I often hear it referred to as the 'three R's' - read, remember, regurgitate.')

In this sense, the thesis of Hirsch's book - that critical thinking and creative expression MUST be accompanied by firm, factual understanding - is a very Deweyan idea. And Hirsch makes a good case, both philosophically and scientifically.

The first half of the book is the more philosophical half. First, Hirsch traces the ideological roots of the 'learning as a social, constructivist enterprise' theory. Owing to the work of a handful of theorists in and around the 1930's, the 'learn from the bottom up' approach (facts first, then higher-order reflection) became replaced by a "bottom down" approach that sees learning as more holistic and constructivistic.

Next, Hirsch shows that by most any measure, these ideas have failed - ever since their inception in the '30's - to produce any improvement in the United State's educational situation. More than that, while these 'reforms' flounder in the public schools, those schools that still hold to a fact-based rigorous educational model - private schools and universities - continue to thrive. So, is it any wonder that we might find reason to question whether these reforms have done more harm than good?

But, as Hirsch points out next, not only are these ideas not questioned within the education establishment, they are simply treated as common sense - even in the light of their repeated failure to deliver on their promises.

AS a masters student in Special Education and a first year teacher, this was a pertinent section for me. I can see the dominance of the constructivist model not only in the school where I teach, but permeating every inch of the Graduate School which I attend. We are taught EXCLUSIVELY in the constructivist approach and the more fact-based approach only comes up when we talk about how things used to be (ah...those draconians!).

Finally, we get to the meat of Hirsch's case. The last third of the book presents the data. While most of the alleged data supporting the constructivist approach boils down to philosophy dressed in the language of science, the data supporting the other, more fact-based approach, consists of numerous studies that independently come to the same conclusion - that fact-based, large-group, disciplined instruction, rather than the more free-form, constructivist, small group approach, wins the day more often than not.

Of course, as I have not done any exhaustive reasearch on this subject, I cannot say that there is NO research to support a constructivist approach. But I can attest that many articles in support of constructivism are thinly veiled philosophizing under the guise of sceintific research, the quality of which would be laughed at in any journal with scholarly standards. (Unfortunately, education journals don't seem to have very high publishing standards.)

My only complaint about this book - and it is a big one - is that Hirsch really should have focused more on the scientific case against a wholly constructivist approach.It may be true that the science supports a more fact-based approach, but, if so, he should rebut it more with science than his own philosophy. Otherwise, he is only doing what he alleges others of doing - being a partisan to philosophy rather than data. If the data is as staggering as he suggests, he shold show it rather than relegate it to the last third of his book.

Be that as it may, this book is sorely needed in an educational world that has been trying the same thing over and over (under new names every few years) only to find that it doesn't work. Perhaps we should take a cue from the schools that are working - private schools, universities, and the pulbic schools of other countries. Of course, if we did that, we might have to admit that Hirsch, and Dewey, are right; education is not worth much without factual rigor.

I purchased this book for a college class. According to the syllabus, I will be reading it in about two weeks, so I cannot tell you if the material is valuable or not. However, after skimming through it, it appears to be well organized.

DAVID HOULE'S "THE SHIFT AGE" OPENS OUR EYES TO OUR OWN INCRERDIBLE TIME OF TRANSFORMATION.

IN A TIME WHEN THE SPEED OF PROGRESS CAN RENDER RECENT INNOVATIONS OBSOLETE BEFORE OUR MORNING COFFE COOLS, OUR ABILITY TO INFLUECE THE DESTINY OF MANKIND AND PLANET EARTH WILL REQUIRE A STEADY HAND. HOULE'S ABILITY TO CONNECT THE DOTS AS THEY SPEED US INTO THE FUTURE PROVIDES US WITH A MACRO VIEW OF HOW OUR WORLD WILL BE SHAPED BY SIX CRITICAL FACTORS.

TECHNOLOGY
ENERGY & GLOBAL WARMING
TRANSPORTATION
DISINTERMEDIATION
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
MEDIA

THE ONLY CHALLENGE WITH "THE SHIFT AGE" IS SOME REDUNDANCIES IN THE USE OF COLUMNS WRITTEN BY HOULE TO DEVELOP FORWWARD MOVING COMNCEPTS. OTHERWISE, THIS IS A GREAT READ. HOWEVER, BECAUSE OF THE REDUNDANCIES, I GAVE THIS BOOK 4 0F 5 STARS.

IN ALL, THIS IS A VERY INSIGHTFUL AND FORESIGHTFUL BOOK REGARDING THE WHOLE OF HUMANITY AND THE PLANET WE LIVE ON.

70 pages are missing from this version on sale. My review is the only place that mentions this Key fact.
Try the paperback version or even another vendor.

I heard about this book during a presentation by Howard Rheingold at a Rotary Honolulu luncheon. I jotted the name of the book down and bought a copy.

This book has given me a broadened perspective on where our world is today in regards to business, technology, medicine, security, terrorism, population, immigration, the environment, energy, and even what it may mean to be human during the remainder of this century and beyond.

The book is divided into 12 chapters. The first chapter sets the premise: The future can be extreme. The future can be bright, or it can be dark. The concept of "Future-Readiness" is introduced, and how the degree of awareness and readyness can change the probable outcome of the future. Dr. Canton also describes a process of looking at the future to determine the extremes, the causes of the extremes, and thus the choices that can be made today to shape the future.

The next eight chapters address various factors which we are living with today which will have a bearing on how the future develops. These topics include: Energy, Prosperity/Poverty, Human Capital, Medicine, Environment, Globalization, Security, and Advanced Science.

The last three chapters serve to pull together the information in the first nine chapters to "plug in the crystal ball" and examine how the confluence of factors will impact the future of the individual, and the global future with an emphasis on China and the U.S.

Granted, there are some pretty wild and imaginative "predictions" of specific inventions, such as teleportation of matter, but the public thought Leonardo DaVinci crazed when he suggested that people could fly with the aid of machines.

For me, the chapter with the most impact was the last chapter: The Future of America and Democracy. This chapter is a "call to service" for America, and the world. It very powerfully urges that we the people, government and business, consider taking certain actions to address the challenges that face our communities, our nation, our world, and humanity.

This was both a thoroughly enlightening and entertaining read. Two years after publication, this book is prescient and timely reading for anyone who wonders "Where are we going?", "How are we going to get there?", "What could go wrong?", but most importantly "What can we do?".

The book contains a lot of preening; the author seems to think it is important to remind us (anecdotally) how many huge companies and heads-of-state he's interacted with. Many of his predictions range from poorly explored (he talks about a hydrogen fuel economy without addressing the fact that hydrogen is just a transport--not a readily available source of energy) to the absurd (predictions that teleportation will be available within decades, given the fact of photonic teleportation which doesn't even slightly approach the complexity of disintegrating, transporting and reintegrating an object!) There's also a lot of political advocacy here; I'd have simply preferred an analysis of technological and cultural trends along with research to back it up.

This book is a reasonably good discussion of the dynamics of organizational change. But it does not do much that a really top-notch book on organizational behavior and development does. The major advantage of being topically focused on education -- the ability to focus on the mission of education -- is pretty much missed. One of the common pitfalls of school systems is to become focused on the environment for the professionals to the point of insufficient attention to the group at the center of school system's mission -- the students. Evans misses opportunities to integrate the theory and practice of organizational change with such core topics as curriculum, pedagogy, and the impact of theories -- either solidly research-based or faddish -- on the culture and outcomes in the classroom

According to Evans, the goal of this immensely readable and practical book is to help school leaders "implement change in ways that truly `take'." He has divided this project into three parts. In the first, he describes the nature of change; in the second, the dimensions of change; and in the third, the dynamics of leading innovation. Evans' book is perhaps different from others in that he looks at change from where most schools are, not from where he believes they should be. In so doing, he describes what it means for schools to grow and improve given the very human constraints that define an educators' world.

In describing the nature of change, Evans sees a need to move away from common organizational assumptions rooted in Taylor's scientific management practices to assumptions that are more aligned with the nature of today's organizational reality. Given that the environments in which organizations operate today are no longer stable, but turbulent, change strategists must alter the way they seek to improve their organizations. Taylor's legacy assumes efficient organizations are stable, rational, hierarchical, and product-oriented. Evans argues that this "rational-structural" paradigm is less useful than the "strategic-systemic" paradigm, which assumes that efficient organizations are fluid, adaptable, open, and process-oriented. Given that cultures (school cultures as well) are fundamentally conservative, changing schools means changing school cultures. The problem is change challenges peoples' competence, creates confusion and causes conflict. Effective change strategies must harness people's competencies, seek coherence, and work productively with conflict.

In describing the dimensions of change, Evans argues that change must be desirable and feasible. He includes a useful table of tasks of change (p. 56), which describes "unfreezing" the school's culture by increasing the fear of not trying, making change meaningful to the change agents, developing new behaviors and ways of thinking, revising existing structures and norms, and generating support for change. In one of his key chapters, Evans addresses the issue of the "reluctant faculty" and offers an analysis of the faculty member in midcareer (the average age of teachers in the US is forty-five). In part, midcareer educators are where they should be: their personal roles (partner, parent, community member) in life have become important, and the material rewards of work have become necessary expectations. Yet for many, educating young people has become less challenging and the rewards and recognition for what they do have become less frequent. These faculty are isolated and unfreezing them is a significant challenge. Schools must offer more new opportunities for leadership, appropriately recognize and reward teachers at all stages of their careers, and seek new ways for teachers to develop professionally and personally. Additionally, to undertake effective change, schools must assess their organizational capacity by examining six school specific contexts, which Evans describes in some depth: (1) Occupational framework (2) Politics (3) History (4) Stress (5) Finances, and (6) Culture (pp. 119-143).

In the last section of the book, Evans focuses on leadership as a key dimension of innovation. Given that effective reform in today's schools requires trust and consensus, authenticity is the key quality for school leaders - be they teachers, administrators, or parents. Major change, he argues, almost never arises from the bottom up, it comes from purposeful leadership. Purposeful leadership means generating consensus around a school's core purposes and demonstrating tireless commitment to them. Purposeful leadership builds followership and with followership comes change. (Evans offers an exploration of six ways to build optimal participation on pages 246-252.) Leaders should emphasize the positive, keep the path clear (when you add, take something away), and be flexible with timelines. The leader can't ask others to change unless s/he changes first. And, leaders must challenge "unprincipled resistance" from staff who violate group values. Schools, like America's top corporations, must reward people for trying innovations, and avoid punishing failure.

This book, more than most I've ever read, is true to its title. Evans is humane, intelligent, insightful, and realistic. This book continues to enrich me each time I re-read it.

This books is full of inspiration, information, and hope. I am so blessed to have come across this book in the early stages of my educational leadership experience. I have been a principal for less than a year. No matter where my leadership "road" takes me, I am sure that I will always reference the reading of this book as playing a pivotal role in shaping me as a leader. In this respect, it will rank second to only one other powerful book which plays a similar, yet infinitely more powerful role: the Bible.

Dr. Evans Book is an excellent guide to change making in established organizations; where the carrot and the whip cannot be applied. The main contribution, after an extended anthropological analysis of group dynamics in defined institutional settings, is the postulation about authentic leadership as a catalyst for making changes. This requires the nurturing of positives among teachers. Evans gives examples of situations of conflict and ways to resolve them.

A staggeringly good book.Easily the best analysis of the change process in education that I've read-and I've 'force-read' a few. Evans' adopts a holistic approach concentrating on why real innovation is so difficult to achieve successfully. However,there is much sage advice and many cogent observations that are enormously thought-provoking. Although ostensibly about change it is also a marvellous examination of leadership,how educational institutions function and how public policy should be implemented.This is an excellent book in every respect.

The author accepts global warming as a given and a very serious problem. He considers what we can do about it at what cost. His approach is to create a computer model in which he hopes to capture the salient economic, energy and climate factors while being simple enough that it can be understood and run repeatedly with different scenarios. I am not an economist and and the equations and their import were often beyond my understanding. I relied on Professor Nordehaus's academic standing (Stirling Professor of Economics at Yale and coauthor of a standard economics text with Paul Samuelson) and took him to be fair in his assessments. I thought he was thorough is his descriptions of the limitations of this approach and his model which I would describe as an economic and cost benefit analysis over time of various strategies for ameliorating global warming.

To understand his model you must understand how future losses from climate change are "discounted" by economists. Freeman Dyson explains this as follows "the value of one dollar invested at an average interest rate of 4 percent for a period of one hundred years would be fifty-four dollars ... therefore, for every dollar spent now on a particular strategy to fight global warming, the investment must reduce the damage caused by warming by an amount that exceeds fifty-four dollars in one hundred years' time to accrue a positive economic benefit to society."

Nordhaus runs his model under eight varying assumptions and or goals so that they can be compared 100 and 200 years out.
1) captures the cost of doing nothing to which the others can be compared.
2) is an optimal policy economically without constraints of eventual temperature or CO2 increase. It only spends on abatement when in costs less than doing nothing.
3) constrains allowable CO2 to 1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 times the pre-industrial level in separate runs.
4) constrains the eventual temperature increase to 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 degrees C. in separate runs.
5) runs several variants of the Kyoto agreement, with and without the US and with an improved treaty.
6) evaluates the Stern review proposal (early major carbon reduction).
7) evaluates the Gore proposal (early stringent carbon reduction).
8) evaluates the result of finding a cheap non-carbon energy source for all energy needs.

For the results let me quote Nordhaus: "The net present-value global benefit of the optimal policy is $3 trillion relative to no controls. This total involves $2 trillion of abatement costs and $5 trillion of reduction climate damages. Note that even after the optimal policy has been taken, there will still be substantial residual damages from climate change, which we estimate to be $17 trillion More of the climate damages are not eliminated because the additional abatement would cost more than the additional reduction in damages."

Note that less than 25% of the economic damage is prevented because it is not cost effective in the "optimal" policy to prevent the rest and thus global temperature increases 2.7 C. (about 5 F.) by 2100. There is also large scale damage for which a dollar amount cannot be assigned and is thus omitted from the model. This includes loss of species, discomfort of higher temperatures, displacement of human, animal and plant populations, shifting weather patterns etc.

Limiting atmospheric CO2 to two times pre-industrial levels or limiting the temperature increase to 2.5 C. produce very similar results to the "optimal" policy. Limiting CO2 to 1.5 times pre-industrial or temperature to 1.5 C. has a net loss of $14 trillion (damages plus abatement costs) over doing nothing. The Gore proposal produces similar results but costs $21 trillion. The Kyoto proposal results where almost identical to doing nothing!

The model also computes an optimal carbon tax for each strategy which because of the discounting needs to increase gradually over time. For the "optimal" strategy the carbon tax would be $27 per ton initially, $90 per ton in 2050 and $200 per ton in 2100. Note that because CO2 is 3.2 times as heavy as carbon if you tax CO2 the rate would be 3.2 times lower or just over $8 initially. Nordhaus also discusses the advantages of a carbon tax over a cap and trade approach.

These results surprised me. I had assumed that the Kyoto Agreement approach, although flawed, could be good if modified and joined by the US and that the Gore approach would be even better. I was annoyed by those who proposed putting the major carbon restrictions off to the future which seemed to push the problem onto our children. I though a cap and trade approach would be superior to a carbon tax since if guaranteed specific reductions. What makes this such an important book from my point of view is that I found myself to be so frequently wrong. The approaches I had favored turned out to be either relatively ineffective, much more expensive or both. This is not a book for those who do not want their current conceptions challenged.

Findings I found important include: 1) A moderate carbon tax with gradual increase is much more cost effective in achieving the SAME GOAL as a stiff initial tax. This was by far the most surprising to me. 2) total participation is much much more efficient that partial whether it is nations or industries. 3) A carbon tax has several important advantages over a cap and trade system. 4) The cost of the various approaches varies dramatically in ways I would not have predicted. 5) There is a huge gain in finding alternative energy sources early in the game making research a top priority deserving large public investment.

This is a book about economic tradeoffs - a question of balance. The author is clear that these models do not capture esthetic, moral, species extinction, stewardship and other concerns which policy makers must address. For instance, the "optimal" economic approach leaves our great grandchildren in a world 5 degrees warmer, with many fewer species, and major environmental shifts. I myself would probably opt for a less economically "optimal" approach that preserved more of the world as I know it and takes fewer risks about possible positive feedback loops leading to an escalating and uncontrollable heat gain. We can make these political decisions more rationally when we can estimate the costs of alternatives. Other things being equal, we would like to arrive at a chosen result at the least cost. I believe that professor Nordhaus's continuing work is a major advance toward helping us achieve that goal.

It is important to remember that this is a simplified model for which the inputs are often best guesses and that some crucial unknown features may turn out to have been omitted. I expect the model will improve over time as more data is accumulated.

If you do not wish to buy the book I think most of the material can be found and the author's website (Google: William Nordhaus). Again I think this is a very important book and I consider it a must for those setting global warming amelioration policy.

With a good collection of articles and case studies, the book helps us to recognize and seize innovation opportunities. I certainly recommend this book for executives. Another one that I recommend is Eightstorm: 8-Step Brainstorming for Innovative Managers.

Well written and presented with interesting examples/case studies. Definitely worth a read.

Am not an expert in the subject area but some of the concepts did appear dated or jaded to me.

First, I apologize for the mixed metaphor in the title above.

Second, all the articles in this collection are "good".

Third, however, you may, as I, be more than a little tired of academics from the world's greatest universities, for decades, on topics like innovation, publishing little bits and pieces.

Fourth, I recently bought 200 books with innovation or its synonyms in their titles or blurb descriptions, grouped them in groups, and ordered books from best to junk within each group. Then I surveyed the whole thing asking myself "what, overall, are all the theories of innovation that are out there and which of them have been tested?"

It turns out there are 27 theories of innovation out there and none of them have been tested, as a whole theory, but bits, extremely small bits, of some of them have been nibbled at by the world's greatest academics from the world's greatest universities. I counted full coverage of NONE of these 27 approaches to innovation, in this particular book. NONE. What is in this book is nibbles of two of the 27--wowie!!! Harvard has nibbled 2 of 27 theories around on innovation--what a powerful research effort! I am sooooo impressed. My friend in Reuters just emailed me complaining how naive I am--professors do not do comprehensive things because they hate the good ideas of their competitors! I am naive. I thought professionals learned to respect and admire the good ideas of their peers and competitors--I am too naive!

Conclusion: if you want some more little bits about innovation, here is another, one of a series of 200 books presenting disconnected little bits about innovation. If you want, however, more what the world's best scholars should be capable of--that is, a comprehensive, thorough survey of all the theories and approaches to innovation in our world, ordered, analyzed, compared, and made sense of, so you have both a mental feel and a practical repertoire of the diversity in doing innovation there to be tried, then this book will sorely disappoint you, not only in its contents but also in the quality of mind that today gets tenure at the "world's best universities".

If these are the world's best minds on innovation--then we live in a more pitiable world than I ever imagined before. Pity us, poor pitiful us!

Honestly, I cannot fault these guys for their bits--each little tiny bit article is cute, nice in its own way, and impressive sounding. However, when I add them all up, I get a sense that this book covers approximately 1/200th of innovation overall. Why string us readers out and make us buy 200 books like this before we get a thorough, grounded, comprehensive, useful overview of all the theories of and approaches to innovating around? I am tired of bits and pieces. I am a little angry at the "world's best professors" from the "world's best universities" stringing me and millions of others along with bits and pieces. Without a forest and a deep thorough understanding of a forest, interest in any one tree is not only unwise, but in real markets run by real people, quite dangerous. The bit of innovation you got from this sort of book and masterfully applied gets run over by 19 other bits, not in this book, that you never heard of till they mashed your project/company. This is not myth--it happened to three global corporations I managed. Bits are dangerous--however clever they make their authors, for a tiny moment, look. I am no longer able to develop any enthusiasm for them.

I could review each bit in this book but to tell you the truth, it does not matter what the bits in this book are--they are all so very very tiny and bit-sized, isolated and cute, that you know, as you read each article, there are 1000s of similar bits in similar books out there. You can sell an awful lot of books this way without conveying a useable understanding of a field like "innovation". Derek Bok, in his earlier incarnation as head of Harvard used to declaim in books on higher education how professors are so very very very narrow and how what they publish is so very very very sliverish in journals that are so very very very unread. I love every five years or so when the Academy of Management journals and reviews get a new editor, to read his/her article declaiming, with the subtlest whimper in his/her tone, how "nobody reads all this great research we publish". They do not read it because it is "bits and pieces".

This book is "great" by the criteria of modern "torture assistant professors for 7 years" American-esque academics--but by the criteria of people like me trying to get 10,000 people to stop being bureaucratic and do what they must do to survive Chinese and other competition, these bits are increasingly useless, cute, and decorative. I do not look forward to the next bits from any of these authors. I fear their entire lives will be consumed in bit-ness. If I read books like this, my own life will be thusly consumed. These professor guys need to do some work, stop publishing the smallest fastest possible bit, and COVER a topic not nibble it. We need people with heftier minds in these pompous over priced elitist universities our media worship.

If you want to know the kind of book I like on innovation--try Van de Ven's Minnesota Studies on Innovation (not the exact title--a big black covered book of about 800 pages). That whole body of longitudinal work following a dozen innovations through 20 years of ups and downs dwarfs what you learn from these cute little assistant-professor style bits and pieces books. It is statistically much better and more powerfully grounded, the research questions are framed profoundly not opportunistically for tenure, and the richness of real lived history of each followed innovation undoes nearly all that cute little assistant-professor books by authors like these, says.

I found little of interest in these articles. I would start in any number of other books if you are interested in innovation.

A collection of reviews in Innovation Strategies/Policies/Theories/Practices some of them related with case studies in big companies.
It can help those who want a reflexive and comprehensive look into Innovation.

A great book! I would encourage the millions who care about themselves to read it.

I discovered the Law of Attraction about a month or so ago watching the Oprah show where she was showing a segment again on the topic of Law of Attraction. The guest were Louise Hay, Cheryl Richardson and another fasinating woman, I cannot remember her name. I went to the bookstore the very next day to puchase a book by Louise Hay. I found The Power is Within You. A wonderful read for me. I was moved by Louise's words of what you think about yourself is what really counts. She suggests that one must focus on what the negatives are in one's life that keeps them from moving forward and get past them. She also believes everyone should do affirmations daily.

As we all know, society is very demanding and judgemental of what everyone is doing or should be doing according to their own standards. Louise explains that it should not matter. I always keep in mind a quote I read somewhere "Everybody wants the freedom to choose their own best course in life--AND the ability to choose everyone else's as well. Well, that is not how is should be. We as individuals are responsible for our own live's. If everyone followed their own path in life, chaos in the world today could be eliminated.

Everyone should read this book and familiarize themselves with The Law of Attraction.

Louise teaches how to get in touch with your inner guidance, that part of you that knows what's best for you at any given time in your life. Growth is so important if you want to empower yourself and live a better life.

Louise Hay tells of the troubled past she overcame to become who she is today. She learned to give herself loving support so she could make the changes necessary to live a better, more empowered life. The "Power is Within You" guides the reader along their own individual journey to create a better life. Elaine Williams

"The Power is Within You" is another inspirational book by Louise Hay. This woman just has the most open, loving heart and she shares that love with everyone with whom she comes into contact.

In this book, her overriding message is that the power to live our best life resides within each of us and comes from self-love and love of others.

She makes some very good points in this book, like:
- All the events you've experienced in your life come from past thoughts and beliefs.
- Your mind doesn't control you; you control your mind.
- Our power comes from taking responsibility for our lives.
- Only you can change your life.

She also offers some great practical advice. For instance, with regard to meditating, she notes that when she does it, she takes a deep breath and asks herself, "What is it I need to know?" and then she sits and listens.

Additionally, she provides 10 ways to love yourself in which she includes such tips as:
- stop criticizing yourself
- be patient with yourself
- take care of your body....and 7 other tips

Louise has written a postive, inspiring book on tapping into your inner power which I enjoyed reading.

After one line in "You Can Heal Your Life" had a profound effect on me, I decided to buy this book, "The Power is Within You". Right off, Louise Hay distinguishes between realizing your power and feeling like a victim. Yes, these two supposed opposite concepts can be confused! Who knew?

I highly recommend this book, whether as your first Louise Hay or your tenth. Each of us, she writes, needs to remind ourself that we can be strong and powerful and move toward our goals....without waiting for someone else's permission to do so! By the way, the line that affected me so deeply was "I approve of myself" repeated over and over. Now I don't need others' approval! Please buy this book for yourself.