change Books

I hadn't read Rebecca Woolf's blog before I read this book. I immediately sought out more, more after wiping the tears from my eyes. Rebecca's eloquence inspires me so much. I haven't been this turned inside out by a memoir since Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions.

Girl's Gone Child, written by Rebecca Woolf, was one of the first blogs I ever read on a regular basis.

In some ways -- OK, LOTS of ways -- my life couldn't be more different than Rebecca's, but I connected with her writing instantly. It didn't matter that she was a 20-something and I was a 40-something. It didn't matter that she had been a "wild child" and I never was (though I always wanted to be!). Her stories about her motherhood and life experiences resonated with something in me -- she touched a place in me that was strong yet hesitant, opinionated yet ambivalent, a mother struggling to still be myself.

All that and more comes through in her memoir, Rockabye: From Wild to Child. While Rockabye is partly a story about her journey to and through unexpected motherhood in her early 20's, it's also a tale about how surviving her childhood shaped her as a woman and mother.

Nobody has an easy time in middle school or high school (unless you were the perky cheerleader with the perfect body). But Rebecca digs deep into her youth in an honest and compelling way that, for better or worse, pushed me to think hard about how my own school experiences and related trauma, more in the distant past than hers, still inform my life and my motherhood today.

Rebecca's writing is honest and raw in a way that makes you appreciate the honesty and openness she brings to her story, but also niggles the reader's brain to go a little deeper about who we are as people and parents, and why we are that way.

As Rebecca grappled with her decision about what choice to make about her unplanned pregnancy, she had an inner conversation with herself while waiting for her first doctor's appointment. That bold internal dialogue led to this truth:

You will never regret a decision you make with your heart.

When I read that, I started crying. Not because I was upset, because I knew she was so right. I struggle with life decisions all the time. I can't help it, I'm a Libra. But her words reminded me that if I can focus on making my decisions, big and small, with my heart -- as Rebecca does and shows us how to do in Rockabye -- I'll be OK.

I have to confess, I did get a few sneak peeks at some of the Rockabye chapters. I was lucky enough to be in Rebecca's online writing group for a while (I was not the most active or productive member, but she welcomed me anyway).

Rockabye is a journey of powerful self-discovery as she makes her way through becoming a mother to her son Archer (who is one of the cutest little boys on the planet, BTW). So when you're tempted to worry about whether you should look at yet another parenting magazine for motherhood advice, take a little advice from the pages of Rockabye, and look to your inner self.

Reading her book gave me another thing -- the good swift kick in the pants to write more about my own mothering experiences. Sure, there are a lot of stories out there, but all our experiences are unique and more of us should write about them and, as Rebecca reminds us, to embrace them, even on those days when we think we won't survive until our children's bedtimes.

Rebecca, thanks for taking me on this journey. You'll never know how much your book meant to me.

I read this book in one sitting, and my only complaint is that it wasn't longer! I stumbled across Rebecca's blog a few months ago - I'm hooked! Wonderful style and heart! She is very honest with the changes in her life and emotional world. Loved it!

I have been reading the authors blog for a few years now. I was very excited to finally read her book. It was a real journey. You are taken to highs and lows and lots of laughs along the way. I read this book in a matter of hours. I highly recommend this book. Especially to newer moms. She tells it like it is.

Awesome, great fast read that is very easy to relate to. The truthful heart warming tale of a new mother and her choices and battles.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a fundamentally different approach to problem solving and change management which is gaining worldwide popularity rapidly. While the traditional approach focuses on analysing problems and then fixing what is wrong, AI does just the opposite: it searches for and amplyfies solutions that already exist (in this it is highly comparable to solution focused brief therapy). Quite a lot of good books have been written on AI. The thing I like most about this book by Watkins and Mohr is how practical it is. The authors generously packed it with very useble examples and tools. This makes it very recommendable for AI practitioners.

Appreciative Inquiry is a method for getting the best, most positive, upbeat, and energizing images of your organization to the fore. AI contrasts to problem-focused inquiry, which usually provokes blame and evasion. A large cadre of Organizational Development and Human Resources types has developed AI, and they swear by its positive effects. The book contains nearly two dozen case examples of AI interventions, ranging from small organization to large multi-national corporations. The authors present a coherent theory (social constructionism) and method to bolster AI's techniques. It has much in common with post-modern psychotherapy, the construction of "magic solutions" ("best practices" in their terms), and centering on the individuals' perspectives (rather than some larger, "objective" truth) about an organization.

It is clear that you have to be sophisticated to do AI interventions. One imagines that you should belong to an AI network, be thoroughly trained, and be supervised. The AI intervention probably does not work without the requisite OD/HR training and perspective. If you are interested, this is your textbook.

I found the book moderately difficult to read and digest, partly because the authors have created such an elaborate theory behind the intervention. The authors are less than candid about "failed" interventions (p. 206), and terms like "co-creating" and "sociotechnical" (what?). I came away from this book believing that AI is something like Public Discourse applied to businesses.

If you want to use this book, plan on studying it in detail and enrolling in AI workshops.

Appreciative Inquiry is a way of seeing and being in the world. ... Appreciative Inquiry applied, whether as a planning process or an evaluative process, becomes empowering and life-affirming in any human system. (page 191) The key to sustaining the momentum is to build an "appreciative eye" into all the organization's systems, procedures, and ways of working. (page 152) AI is not simply a tool ... it is a total way of being/working.

As an organization consultant I am interested in three things when learning about and considering adopting an approach or methodology: what are it's theoretical basis, fundamental assumptions and beliefs, basic process, and application to different types of organizational situations. Watkins and Mohr have written a book that offers all three. The opening two chapters ground Appreciative Inquiry in the history of the OD theory and method and clearly explain the core principles and generic processes of AI. The subsequent chapters each focus on one of the five generic processes plus evaluation. Each chapter explains one process in detail, illustrating it with two case examples. The combination of grounded theory and practice facilitates understanding, imagining, and applying. The examples are drawn from different consultants, types of organizations, and focuses of interventions, all of which support a rich understanding of the potential of this approach.

My one wish is that chapter 8, "Finding Innovative Ways to Create the Preferred Future" be expanded. I wanted to read more about an appreciative approach to the Destiny Phase, the most complex part of any change process.

Watkins and Mohr are generous with their knowledge and experience, offering the experienced practitioner enough to begin working from an AI perspective.

This book plus the more academic, Appreciative Inquiry: Rethinking Human Organization Toward a Positive Theory of Change, edited by David L. Cooperrider, Jr. Sorensen Peter F., Diana Whitney, and Therese F.Yaeger, are an excellent package for understanding Appreciative Inquiry: how it developed, its current practice, and directions for future development.

With a growing literature that deals with Appreciative Inquiry (AI), a truly revolutionary way of moving our organization, in their book Magruder Watkins and Mohr have accomplished more to help organization development consultants and managers to understand the potential of AI than any other book currently in print.

Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination covers the subject by alligning both the theoretical concepts to practical applications. It is very well written and presented with a great flow. To the novice to AI it gives all the key elements to get started, for the more seasoned consultant and manager in the field of AI, it gives new ideas and opens up possibilities for further exploration.

It is not be the only book on Appreciative Inquiry but it is at the very top of my reading list on this dynamic subject. When I recommend readings to students of AI, Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the speed of imagination, is the only book they need to read.

Congratulations to Jane Magruder Watkins and Bernard Mohr, they have produced the best book on AI that is available today.

Appreciative Inquiry fits within recent "modern mediation theory" and Public Discourse techniques. I cannot add more to what previous reviewers have said (above), but note only that the techniques are more difficult to apply than the authors indicate and require all parties in the discussion to be committed to the end-result. AI techniques cannot work in groups where there are power vacuums or undisclosed power grabbing and coaltion-formation.

Cathy Alter is a 30-something unhappy divorcee who realizes that her life is a mess because she has made poor choices. Determined to change, she uses women's magazines to challenge, inspire, and guide. One year and a lot of hard work later, Alter is much happier with herself and her life.

Part self-help and part memoir, Up for Renewal reads like fiction. Will it motivate readers to change? I'm not sure - I'm still wrangling with "84 Things You Need for the Perfect Wardrobe" (pp 105-06) - but it was a lot of fun going along for the ride.

This book appears to be Cathy Alter's somewhat autobiographical account of a year of positive transformation largely due to following the trite advice she found in over a dozen glossy women's magazines. I think the main message is that if a person will focus on making necessary changes in her life and keep at it for long enough, then life will improve. A secondary purpose of the book is to amuse the reader. Some will find her humor more to their liking than others.

Undoubtedly the vignettes are fun and creative (unless they really happened). It appears the character's was stuck in a shallow, meaningless, and amoral lifestyle, and in that may not be particularly unique. The reader grows to like the Cathy of the book, and hopes she has a happy ending. Her friends and family are very vivid and believable people, thought they don't seem to have particularly worthwhile relationships with each other.

This is fun light reading. Urban women in their 20s and 30s (and maybe a little older) will enjoy the book. Others will feel like they're looking into the window of a foreign culture. The idea for the book (or reality of it) is cute and clever. If credit is due for Cathy's year of self-improvement, I think she deserves the credit, not the slick publications that play off the perennial fears of the readers.

When I came of age and left home I was at that stage of life where I didn't trust (or want) my mother's advice. I found myself sitting in the break room at work nibbling on my bagel and being stared at by the flawless faces of actresses and supermodels while bright colored cover lines offered all the advice I was looking for. My uber strict, religious parents had never allowed magazines in the house, especially those where teens could read about sex or learn how to find the best bikinis. Here were whole guidebooks on how to find love, be a sex goddess and what to wear while doing it. Cosmo, Glamour and Marie Claire became my guidebooks into the world of being an adult woman.

Cathy Alter's experience might not have been the same, but when I read about this book months ago I felt drawn to it. Afterall, someone out there had taken all those articles I have saved over the years in hopes of one day using their tips, tricks and advice to trim down, do my eye make-up without looking like a prostitute, find the most flattering jeans for my body type, and put them into practical use.

In a very Carrie Bradshaw-esque narrative, Alter explains all the uglies in her life that lead to her year of subscriber madness. Her unhappy marriage and subsequent divorce. Her vending machine contents diet. Her sex with-all-the-wrong-men life. Maybe not everyone who reads this book has gone through the same fumblings but it was easy to relate to her feeling of needing a change. Like me, she couldn't rely on her mother for help so her turn to magazines made me feel a lot less silly for doing so in my younger years.

Cathy ended up subscribed to fourteen different magazines including Self, Real Simple, O (The Oprah Magazine), InStyle, Allure and Cosmo. Each month she chose an aspect of her life she wanted to make changes or improvements to and used her magazines to find ways to do each. From simply packing a home-made lunch to avoid vending machine junk food to keeping up a healthy appetite for sex with her long-term boyfriend. At times the seemingly superficial things she wanted to change actually became quite profound. For example, during her cooking month a close friend was diagnosed with a life threatening condition so she wanted to do something special for him. She wanted her friend to have something good before he went through the horrors of hospitals and tests, so she prepared a meal for him. The recipe ended up being so miserably spicy that it was impossible to eat and as they laughed over it she realized that it didn't matter what she had cooked, what mattered was that it had brought them together. It was the one time in reading this book that I got a little choked up.

By the end of her 12 months Alter was ready to move on from her magazine living experiment. She had reached a point where she no longer needed to run to them for advice. Her year as a subscriber had helped her make the improvements she sought and she had learned not only a lot of new things, like how to wrap a sandwich in plastic wrap, but also how to trust her own instincts.

All in all it felt like reading a woman's self-improvement blog. I think fans of Sex and the City would appreciate the writing style and even some of the subject matter. I think this would be a terrific gift for a newly divorced friend or college graduated who is going through a floundering stage of in-between-ness. I keep picturing it in a gift basket with the latest copy of Self, Real Simple and Allure, some dark chocolate, a copy of the Sex and the City movie, a bottle of wine and a pair of comfy slippers. Woah. I think I just planned out my recently-divorced mother's Christmas gift. Enjoy!

As a huge magazine reader I was really looking forward to reading this book. As I got further and further into the book I found myself rooting against the author. While the premise of the book was engaging the actual execution of the idea lacked any commitment. This is really a "novel" that would have made a good magazine article but lacked the substance necessary for a book.

At 322 pages, this book is about 200 pages too long. The book starts out with a very interesting summary of the newly divorced author's toxic romantic/sexual relationships and other self destructive behaviors, and describes her interesting plan to improve her life. Unfortunately, my interest waned rapidly as the book progressed. The writing style was inconsistent. Brilliant in places, incredibly boring in others.

Borrow this book from the library if you feel you must read it.

I purchased this book about a week after my father passed away June 30th of this year... I purchased it because I didn't want to read the typical book about grieving but something specific for women and their fathers. If you are looking for a book that will give researched based analysis from a psychiatrist or a therapist about what happens to women after we lose our fathers, this is not the book that you want to read. But, if you are looking for a book that will make you feel a kinship with other women who have lost their fathers then this is a great read. I would often have to put it down because the book conjured up so much emotion when I would read it. The author lost her father after a long battle with cancer, which is what happened to my father so that was very helpful to me. When I was finished, I didn't feel like I understood the process of grieving any better; I still found myself thinking certain things and wondering if they were normal. But, I did feel like the way that I felt about losing my father, the way that I felt about remembering him and things that I wanted to do as a legacy for him made sense because many of the women who had contributed their stories felt the same way.

I tried to read this book after the death of my Dad due to a long battle with cancer. This author can only "help" or more accurately share stories of how dysfunctional her relationship with her father was, and how promiscuous she was, what a bad friend she was to those around her, rather than actually tell you anything about what life is like after the death of a father that you had a healthy relationship with. If you are normal and your father is normal, and you were friends with your father, this book is not for you. If you need therapy and your Dad needs therapy, here is clearly the book for you.

This book is full of sweeping generalizations to validate the author's bad decisions in the relationships in her life. It is not backed up with any research or facts of any kind. She should have bought a journal and written about the bad relationship in private rather than publish it. Please do not buy this book.

As I began to read the introduction to this amazing book, it was as if I were dictating and Clea was simply putting the words on paper. Although our Father's were educated in different ways, the grief of a slow death is much different. My Father's illness lasted for six years and I felt like he died a million times before the actual death. Clea has taken an uncomfortable reality and placed it on a page for confirmation and viewing by all who have suffered the loss of our greatest Love as daughters. This is an amazing find!!!

My father died almost a year ago and I bought this book in October 2004. I'm still having a hard time reading it; not because it's not easy reading, but because of the depth of emotion it conjures up as it pushes me to reflect on the relationship between me and my dad. No matter how old I get, I will always miss him and wish I could have stayed young and he could've lived forever. I think when I get to the end of this book, I will have gone through more healing through my grief. It's that kind of book..

While I found it difficult to embark on reading a book on this topic (as my wound is relatively new and certainly unhealed) it was comforting to read about similar feelings and emotions women who've also lost their father are feeling. While I found many of the chapters to be irrelevant in my own personal life, I am sure many would find them helpful. In the very least, it was nice to take the time to help face my loss.

The author does an excellent job showing how to build rapport and trust.
Clear, concise dialogue and easy to follow.
A wonderful addition to the Family Therapy class I am about to attend.

This is a 'must read' for anyone working with groups of people of any size in any organization. Great application for business, schools, churches, volunteers, anyone wanting to motivate people with a common goal, purpose, or vision.

In less than 200 pages, Dr. Shapiro provides an informative, engaging overview of change management concepts, principles and tactics. The inclusion of brief cases and summary graphics facilitate understanding and memorization of key points. As a management consultant and educator, I look forward to recommending this book to clients and students seeking practical information on making change work.

Dr. Andrea Shapiro is a friend and colleague from the days when we were both employed by Nortel Networks, a telecommunications firm recognized for "delivering communications capabilities that enhance the human experience, securing and protecting the world's most critical information."

As I opened the pages of my newly acquired copy of "Creating Contagious Commitment" I was thrilled to see another friend, Helen Sims, provide testimony for this work.

Andrea Shapiro's book: "Creating Contagious Commitment, Applying the Tipping Point to Organizational Change" provides valuable insight on how organizations can optimize their effectiveness through proved decision making.

Dr. Shapiro provides a unique perspective to organizational change because while working for Nortel Networks we experienced only one constant force... change... Throughout many projects and initiatives, such as our global attempt to fine-tune the Supply Chain Management of Nortel, from Customers to suppliers, we learned first hand how to utilize the Tipping Point computer simulations, developed by Dr. Shapiro.

Today, many of us still approach our jobs by utilizing the tools we developed, the strategies we learned to deal with the dynamics that underpin effective organizational change. Simply... best-in-class!

You could sum all of this book's content in just one page, even one paragraph: Design processes on the basis of usability. Include in process design activities people who will use the process. If you don't convince people about the merits of a new process, they won't use it, worse they will sabotage it. Once the process catches momentum, it will spread quickly.

Now, if you repeat this a thousand times with slightly different sentences, add a thousand "tipping point" phrases, a lot of tables and graphs of questionable use, voila, you have a book.

It is a wonder to me how it got such a high rating.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone seeking insight into the peculiarities of organizational/workplace change. It has helped me understand why so many workplace "initiatives" seem doomed to failure almost before they have been launched. More important, the author provides concrete examples of remedies to prevent these failures. The author's writing style is clear, jargon-free, and to the point. The examples she uses to illustrate her ideas are clearly stated, and interesting. I read this book after reading the "The Tipping Point" (forgot the author's name, sorry) and found this book to be an excellent companion piece. It beautifully illustrates how tipping point theory is not only relevent but directly applicable to the work place.

I was extremely disappointed with this product. It only provided the answers for every 4th problem and is an extreme rip-off for what you get. Over 40 dollars for 1/4 th of the book? No thanks. Borrow it from somebody if you really need it or copy the answers you need.

The book covers the subject matter very broadly, but lacks in-depth detail and practical applications. It could be more concise in sections (especially about the author)and more in-depth in usage, application, and research.

Dr. Fogg has done a great job of creating an introductory work for Captology. The book is well written and well cited. It's rare to see a technology book that has research cited to back its claims. Often times claims are made based on experience without any real claim to validity. Dr Fogg's writing is more academic and in that sense refreshing. Although, it would certainly be nice to see both aspects, experience and reproducible controlled tests, in a single book.

If you are well versed in both psychology and technology, this book will not enlighten you, but it does provide a great foundation for future research. If you work in user experience, marketing, or any performance based technology field, you can definitely benefit from the material in this book. I take this to be Captology 101 and I would definitely love to see some upper division material coming down the pipeline.

My key take aways are:
- Understanding the basics of Captology
- Getting a well researched foundation for future, real world testing
- Having an accurate psychological lexicon

There is some actionable information scattered throughout the book. For example, in chapter 5, Computers as Persuasive Social Actors, Fogg relates a study he performed that showed changing the error messages on a piece of technology made it "rated...more favorably" and "users reported that [it] gave better information, was more accurate, and was more knowledgeable." This is good research to have if you're a user experience designer especially if you have to justify your work to non-believers. However, this book is not meant to be full of actionable items, so don't expect that of it.

I recommend this book for an academic overview. If you'd like real world examples try Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results, but don't expect to learn why the real world examples work other than a surface level explanation. Though reading both books will give you a pretty good understanding of persuasive technology.

Having spent 8 years in the field of Web Development and after being a part of many Internet and Intranet web projects and applications. There was one question that was constantly bothering me. We as a team, on almost all the occasions tried very hard to make the applications and websites as much user friendly as much as we could so that the users CAN DO it when he is there. The question was if we create something that user-friendly that he CAN DO what he wants to do, does it mean that he WILL DO it?

So, thats where we started, the WILL to do became most important for us. On some of the projects the marketing and presentations helped us in creating the WILL within the user that drove good response. However, when I got my self in the MARCOM team in one of my previous companies and I saw my deliverables changing from just creating user-friendly designs to calculating and delivering ROIs, I thought I needed something more solid to help me get there.

I have gone through the entire Human Factors International Usability course (now trying for CUA exam). Where I found PET (Persuasion, Emotions and Trust) as just a few slides of the course material. I started digging deep into it well before that but I could see the connection of the Captology and any image, web page, micro-site or anything that we as a team create.

I got hooked to this book, read it many times, studied all the possible material available from Dr. B.J Fogg and implemented it to my daily work. The material is so practical and so straight forward that its impact could just not be ignored. Just a small fix on web page, like adding a logo or writing a persuasive copy gave us responses. Though in Chapter 9, Dr. Fogg deals with the Ethics of Persuasion, we tried few non-ethical ways (Manipulation) for few days to observe the results and we had the success.

If you are in the field of marketing and web, look at this book as a tool that you can always keep with yourself and use it when necessary.

My next book is Mobile Persuasion by Dr. B.J Fogg. Thanks Dr. Fogg for handling the international delivery smoothly and answering all my mails.

Dr. BJ Fogg has created a new area of study: captology, the study of computers as persuasive technologies. This book is an excellent introduction to this new field: it outlines the different arenas within the field, expands on its implications, and explores the ethical issues related to the topic.

As a student of Persuasive Technology at Stanford, I found this book to be extremely helpful in my understanding of the topic. It's very easy to read and understand and is not reminiscent of a text book at all. I recommend this book to everyone, whether you are an active researcher in the field or a civilian interested in seeing how technology can and will further change our lives.

I've been interested in the persuasive aspects of technology and design since I was in 4th grade, and online since 1983. While the title is "persuasive technology", the discussion is broader than many of us often think about technology. Professor Fogg lays out a clear framework for considering how the products we use influence us, and how to design products which are more persuasive. I'm currently working with a number of organizations improving the process of civic engagement, and find myself frequently referring to concepts from the book. The book has become an indispensable tool. Thank you Professor Fogg.

The book has some good content, but the auther him-haws around. I enjoy a good book that can get to the point and drive it home. This book does not do that. It jumps around a lot and is hard to follow in places. I wouldn't recommend this book to other readers.

..it's a great book. The personal anecdotes will speed you through a book more scholarly than it first appears. With the clean slate that North America presented the world upon it's discovery, it's amazing how well it's held up, considering all the different hands on the chalk!

Every now and then a book comes along that evokes our experience of the landscape, books by authors such as William Least Heat-Moon, John Hanson Mitchell, Donald Meinig, John Stilgoe, or J. B. Jackson. With Visions of Paradise, John Warfield Simpson joins the group and goes beyond. He offers a wide ranging and readable description of the forces that shaped our landscape from conflicts in landscape values to public policy and law. Visions is a wonderful book filled with personal anecdotes that engage. Anyone interested in cities, suburbs and environmental stewardship hould have a copy of this handsome book

Mr. Simpson's book is an unparalleled look at this nation's beginnings, transitions, growing pains, and its current situation. To understand today's problems and land-use ethics, one must read this book. Through elbow grease, endless research and a fascination with the land, Mr. Simpson has created a classic that anyone involved with the land must read. On a personal note, Ohio residents will find this book particularly interesting, the development of Columbus is used as a typical example of settlement and expansion.

I am not a 'landscaper' in the grand or even minimal sense (tending to let my own backyard become overgrown), but I do have a layman's interest in history. Perhaps for those reasons I found 'Visions of Paradise' to be an enthralling introduction to the history of our American landscape. Simpson was able to engage my interest quickly with his obvious feeling for and sensitivity to our culture's rather short-sighted treatment of the natural landscape. As a native midwesterner I was particularly interested in his regional references but really found the entire volume to be captivating. He truly helped me to understand the national landscape as 'ours' in a collective sense. For the first time I have an informed appreciation of our land and believe that I have a role, however small, in its future. I will never be able to take a trip by car or plane in the same way again - Simpson's book has helped me understand the importance of my examining the nuances of all parts of our landscape, and being able to take a stronger position regarding its appropriate uses (even my own yard, which I am now cultivating more carefuly).