The One Page Project Manager or The Slave Ship

The One-Page Project Manager: Communicate and Manage Any Project With a Single Sheet of Paper

Author: Clark A Campbell

The One-Page Project Manager shows you how to boil down any project into a simple, one-page document that can be used to communicate all essential details to upper management, other departments, suppliers, and audiences. This practical guide will save time and effort, helping you identify the vital parts of a project and communicate those parts and duties to other team members.

Book review: Asian Diet or Strawberries

The Slave Ship: A Human History

Author: Marcus Rediker

In this widely praised history of an infamous institution, award-winning scholar Marcus Rediker shines a light into the darkest corners of the British and American slave ships of the eighteenth century. Drawing on thirty years of research in maritime archives, court records, diaries, and firsthand accounts, The Slave Ship is riveting and sobering in its revelations, reconstructing in chilling detail a world nearly lost to history: the "floating dungeons" at the forefront of the birth of African American culture.

The New York Times - Adam Hochschild

…the notorious Middle Passage across the Atlantic, on which more than 12 million Africans were embarked for the Americas over more than three centuries, we know about almost entirely from the perpetrators. There are few accounts of this voyage by slaves…but an astonishingly large body of evidence remains from those who trafficked in human beings: letters, diaries, memoirs, captain's logbooks, shipping company records, testimony before British Parliamentary investigations, even poetry and at least one play by former slave-ship officers. It is this rich array of material that Marcus Rediker plumbs, more thoroughly than anyone else to date, for his masterly new book, The Slave Ship: A Human History…Rediker has made magnificent use of archival data; his probing, compassionate eye turns up numerous finds that other people who've written on this subject, myself included, have missed.

Publishers Weekly

In this groundbreaking work, historian and scholar Rediker considers the relationships between the slave ship captain and his crew, between the sailors and the slaves, and among the captives themselves as they endured the violent, terror-filled and often deadly journey between the coasts of Africa and America. While he makes fresh use of those who left their mark in written records (Olaudah Equiano, James Field Stanfield, John Newton), Rediker is remarkably attentive to the experiences of the enslaved women, from whom we have no written accounts, and of the common seaman, who he says was "a victim of the slave trade... and a victimizer." Regarding these vessels as a "strange and potent combination of war machine, mobile prison, and factory," Rediker expands the scholarship on how the ships "not only delivered millions of people to slavery, [but] prepared them for it." He engages readers in maritime detail (how ships were made, how crews were fed) and renders the archival (letters, logs and legal hearings) accessible. Painful as this powerful book often is, Rediker does not lose sight of the humanity of even the most egregious participants, from African traders to English merchants. (Oct. 8)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Christopher Rager - Library Journal

In Slave Ship, University of Pittsburgh history professor Rediker employs the slave vessel as the central metaphor in the exploration of the African diaspora, the roots of capitalism, and the creation of race. As a scholar of "history from below," Rediker juxtaposes the horrific machinations of the slave trade with, as the book's subtitle indicates, the daily dramas of the industry's participants-captain, sailor, and slave. The strength of Rediker's narrative-beyond the gruesome explication of the ship's inherent terror-is the use of the ship as representative of a factory that commodifies humanity and a dungeon of racial subjugation that creates a subspecies. As a result of the Atlantic journey, the slave is dehumanized and therefore ready for use as an implement of industry and agriculture. This work is carefully and intelligently read by David Drummond, a former winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award. His succinct enunciation, warm tone, and precise yet subtly compassionate interpretation enhances Rediker's already exemplary book. Strongly recommended for libraries of all sizes and an integral addition to any collection focused on the history of the African slave trade. [An LJ Best Book of 2007; also available as downloadable audio from Audible.com.-Ed.]

Kirkus Reviews

"Making the slave ship real, "historian Rediker (History/Univ. of Pittsburgh) revivifies the horror of this world-changing machine. By 1807, more than nine-million Africans in shackles, manacles, neck rings, locks and chains had been carried to New World plantations, a crime impossible without ships, the most complex machines of the age, turned for this evil purpose into floating dungeons. Rediker's multilayered narrative-marred only by an occasional eruption of academic lingo and a clunky economic analysis-examines first the captains, whose absolute authority and mastery of many duties-warden, straw boss, international merchant, technician-made them indispensable. Their violent tyranny animated the "Savage Spirit of the Trade," cascading downward to the victimized crews, the dregs of the waterfront, who in turn became victimizers, liberally employing the cat-o'-nine tails on their captives. Boarding the ships, the slaves, themselves prisoners of African wars, criminals in their own societies or kidnap victims, transitioned to European control and found their world completely changed. Here Rediker (Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, 2004, etc.) excels, detailing their strategies of resistance-refusing to eat, jumping overboard, rising up against their captors-their shipboard punishments, deaths and deprivations and the new kinship that arose among the survivors of the harsh Middle Passage, a bonding that helped sustain the resistance movement for centuries. Finally, the author includes stories by and about abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, who gathered the horror stories of the seamen; William Wilberforce, Parliament's most persistent anti-slave trade voice;James Stanfield, an old jack tar who wrote from the common sailor's perspective; Captain John Newton, whose religious transformation turned him into an opponent; and Olaudah Equiano, a slave who wrote movingly about the Atlantic crossing. Rediker's dramatic presentation powerfully impresses. Agent: Sandra Dijkstra/Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency

What People Are Saying

Peter Wood
Marcus Rediker, like the incomparable Herman Melville, understands both the immediate human drama and the sweeping global context of life aboard a cramped ocean vessel in the age of sail. Now Rediker brings his informed passion, energetic research, rich storytelling, and stark analysis to perhaps the most wrenching, important and neglected topic in the early modern Atlantic World. Following in the wake of such pioneers as W. E. B. DuBois and Elizabeth Donnan, Rediker joins a growing group of scholars who are reinvigorating historical research on the huge traffic in enslaved Africans. Two centuries after the abolition of the English and North American slave trade, he uses his unique gifts to take us below decks, giving a human face to the inhuman ordeal of the Middle Passage. (Peter Wood, author of Diversity: The Invention of a Concept)

Alice Walker
I was hardly prepared for the profound emotional impact of The Slave Ship: A Human History. Reading it established a transformative and never to be severed bond with my African ancestors who were cargo in slave ships over a period of four centuries. Their courage, intelligence and self-respect; their fierce efforts to free themselves (and, though cruelly bound, to create community) moved me so deeply that, for several days, I took to my bed. There I pondered the madness of greed, the sadism of wielding absolute power over any creature in chains, the violence of attempting to dominate and possess what is innately free. For all Americans and indeed all those who live in the Western world who have profited by, or suffered from, the endless brutality of the slave trade, during all its centuries and into the present, this book is homework of the most insistent order. There is no re-balancing of our wrecked planet without sitting with, and absorbing, the horrifying reality of what was done, by whites, by the West, by the wealthy, to our beloved ancestors, The Africans, who endured and sometimes survived "the middle passage" to bring their radiance and their indomitable spirits into the New World. What, now, is to be done? That is the question that can only have a collective answer. (Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple)

Barry Unsworth
I admire this book more than I can easily say. At the heart of it is the slave ship, engine of wood and hemp and canvas, instrument of terror. From this dark heart Marcus Rediker ranges outwards over four centuries and three continents. He brings to his task a combination of dedicated research, deep human concern and narrative power of a high order. By insisting on the realities of individual experience, he counteracts our human tendency to take refuge from horror in comforting abstractions. We are all indebted to him for this. In range and scope and in the humanity of its treatment, this account of the Atlantic slave trade is unlikely ever to be superceded. (Barry Unsworth, author of Sacred Hunger)

Steven Hahn
Marcus Rediker is one of the most distinguished historians of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, and he brings to the slave ship both an unrivaled knowledge of maritime labor and transport and a deep theoretical perspective on the slave trade's role in the rise of capitalism. His is a 'human history' with all its dramas and complex lineaments. (Steven Hahn, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning A Nation Under Our Feet)

Ira Berlin
The slave ship was a machine that manufactured modernity. As it moved across the Atlantic, the world changed. It joined Europe, Africa, and the Americas, creating enormous wealth and untold misery, and its hellish voyages continue to cast a shadow over our lives. Marcus Rediker, a preeminent historian the maritime Atlantic, unravels its history with unmatched knowledge of the material changes and moral ruptures its created. Slave Ship is the best of histories, deeply researched, brilliantly formulated, and morally informed. (Ira Berlin, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland and author of Many Thousands Gone a winner of the Bancroft Prize, Slaves Without Masters, and Generations of Captivity)

Patrick Manning
This Atlantic epic brilliantly reveals the slave ship as a 'vast machine,' transforming its human cargo into slaves-but it is also a precise portrayal of Africans, free and captive, in their choices and desperate struggles. (Patrick Manning, author of Slavery and African Life)

Peter Linebaugh
The Atlantic's foremost historian from below has written a masterpiece. In this human history you can hear the shrieks of pain, the groans of loss, and uproar of rebellion. In the midst of mass and calculated murders Rediker finds the genesis of a human story that delineated ethnicities, that created musical lamentations, that caused heart-rending resistance, that produced African and human consciousness, and in the end, with ex-slaves offering amazing graces to discarded sailors, the cry still rises up from this magnificent book for justice and for reparation. (Peter Linebaugh, author of The London Hanged)

Robin Blackburn
The Slave Ship is a tour de force. Never before has the reality of the trade been so comprehensively and subtly conveyed. Marcus Rediker's intimate knowledge of sea-faring in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries enables him to reconstruct the life-and death-on those on the slave trading vessels more vividly and convincingly than any previous historian. I am sure that it will continue to be read as long as people want to understand crucial episode in the birth of the modern world. (Robin Blackburn, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research, New York, and author of The Making of New World Slavery)

Marcus Wood
The slave ship is an open metaphoric wound lying at the heart of attempts to understand the middle passage. Marcus Rediker's remarkable new book combines a uniquely profound understanding of the maritime industries in the eighteenth century with an imaginative humanism. No other book has displayed such combined practicality and compassion regarding the actual workings of 'the abominable traffick.' Rediker's work important not only because of what it uncovers, but because it suggests ways of overcoming the disastrous legacy of the slave trade. The Slave Ship struck me with the force of prophecy, it is a superbly realized work that will actually change the living memory of slavery, and only Marcus Rediker could have written it. (Marcus Wood, author of Slavery, Empathy, and Pornography)

Robert Harms
Mixing powerful vignettes with astute analysis, Markus Rediker brings the terrible dramas of the middle passage to life. This beautifully written and exhaustively researched book gives us unforgettable portraits of the captives, captains, and crewmen who came together in that particular kind of hell known as the slave ship. This is Atlantic history at its best. (Robert Harms, author of The Diligent)

Table of Contents:

Introduction     1
Life, Death, and Terror in the Slave Trade     14
The Evolution of the Slave Ship     41
African Paths to the Middle Passage     73
Olaudah Equiano: Astonishment and Terror     108
James Field Stanfield and the Floating Dungeon     132
John Newton and the Peaceful Kingdom     157
The Captain's Own Hell     187
The Sailor's Vast Machine     222
From Captives to Shipmates     263
The Long Voyage of the Slave Ship Brooks     308
Epilogue: Endless Passage     343
Acknowledgments     357
Notes     361
Index     417
Illustration Sources and Credits     433

The Confessions of an Advertising Man or Real Estate Development

The Confessions of an Advertising Man

Author: David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy was an advertising genius. At the age of 37, he founded the New York-based agency that later merged to form the international company known as Ogilvy & Mather. Regarded as the father of modern advertising, Ogilvy was responsible for some of the most memorable advertising campaigns ever created. Confessions of an Advertising Man is the distillation of all the Ogilvy concepts, tactics, and techniques that made this international best-seller a blueprint for sound business practice. If you aspire to be a good manager in any business, this seminal work is a must-read.

Table of Contents:

	Foreword	11
	The Story Behind This Book	15
	Background	29
I	How to Manage an Advertising Agency	33
II	How to Get Clients	51
III	How to Keep Clients	84
IV	How to Be a Good Client	100
V	How to Build Great Campaigns	117
VI	How to Write Potent Copy	133
VII	How to Illustrate Advertisements and Posters	144
VIII	How to Make Good Television Commercials	159
IX	How to Make Good Campaigns for Food Products, Tourist Destinations and Proprietary Medicines	164
X	How to Rise to the Top of the Tree - Advice to the Young	171
XI	Should Advertising Be Abolished?	179
	Index	197

New interesting textbook: Tai Chi for Health or Resistance Training

Real Estate Development: Principles and Process

Author: Mike E Miles

Ideal for anyone new to real estate development, the fourth edition of this bestselling book covers each stage of the process step by step, explaining the basics of idea conception, feasibility, planning, financing, market analysis, contract negotiation, construction, marketing, and asset management. Thoroughly updated, the book includes material on financing and marketing.

Shut up Stop Whining and Get a Life or Pocket Idiots Guide to Living on a Budget

Shut up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life: A Kick-Butt Approach to a Better Life

Author: Larry Winget

Shut Up, Stop Whining & Get a Life

This is not your typical self-help book. You won't find any motivational platitudes or cute business parables here. This is more of a "get off your butt and get to work" approach that can help you achieve more success, make more money, improve your business, and have more fun.

Larry Winget doesn't pull any punches here. He believes that business gets better when businesspeople get better through personal growth. And it works the same way in your personal life-husbands and wives improve each other when they improve themselves, and kids improve when their parents do. In other words, everything in life gets better when you get better, and nothing gets better until you get better.

This book can make you better, but it will probably tick you off. Winget is direct, caustic, and controversial. You won't like or agree with everything he has to say. Yet his advice is full of wisdom and truth that can't easily be argued with.

Words from Shut Up, Stop Whining & Get a Life that prove that this book is anything but typical:

"If you don't have much going wrong in your life, then you don't have much going on in your life."

"When you work, work! When you play, play! Don't mix the two."

"What you think about, talk about, and do something about is what comes about."

"When it quits being fun-quit."

"Time management is a joke."

And that's just the beginning!

New interesting textbook: The Viagra Myth or AyurVeda and Life Impressions Bodywork

Pocket Idiot's Guide to Living on a Budget

Author: Jennifer Basye Sander

The book that shows how to make the most of your money-now updated.

Living on a budget is essential for the vast majority of Americans. This new edition lays out the basics of budgeting, clearly and inexpensively. Readers will discover how to follow a budget, how to make the necessary big purchases, the financial dangers of leasing a car, and how to get their budget on paper and in workable categories.

Table of Contents:

The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Living on a Budget

Chapter 1 - Why You Might Need This Book

Chapter 2 - But I'm Not an Accountant

Chapter 3 - Getting Ready

Chapter 4 - The Twelve Steps to Pulling It Off

Chapter 5 - The Last Few Steps

Chapter 6 - The Balancing Act

Chapter 7 - Using Credit When Credit Is Due

Chapter 8 - Making Big Purchases

Chapter 9 - Special Budget Scenarios

Chapter 10 - Great Budgeting Resources

Chapter 11 - Living Happily Ever After

Appendix A - Putting Expense Items into Categories

Appendix B - Great Books for Budgeteers

Index

Thinking Strategically or Dont Sweat the Small Stuffand Its All Small Stuff

Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics and Everyday Life

Author: Avinash K Dixit

A major bestseller in Japan, Financial Times Top Ten book of the year, Book-of-the-Month Club bestseller, and required reading at the best business schools, Thinking Strategically is a crash course in outmaneuvering any rival. This entertaining guide builds on scores of case studies taken from business, sports, the movies, politics, and gambling. It outlines the basic good strategy making and then shows how you can apply them in any area of your life.

Publishers Weekly

Most books on game theory either focus on specialized applications (cardplaying, business, nuclear war) or bore with mathematics and jargon. Free of formulas and argot, this refreshing exception distills the principles, concepts, tools and techniques--brinkmanship, bargaining, unconditional moves, vicious circles, etc.--with an astonishing diversity of illustrative examples drawn from political campaigns, baseball, neighborhood dynamics of segregation, the military draft, speed limits, childrearing and so forth. In helping strategists anticipate rivals' responses and win the game, economics professors Dixit and Nalebuff (who teach game theory at Princeton and Yale, respectively) provide managers, negotiators, athletes, parents and other game-players with a formidable weapon. Drawings. BOMC, Fortune Book Club and QPB selections. (Feb.)

Book about: Life after Welfare or Political Science

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff...and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life

Author: Richard Carlson

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff...and It's All Small Stuff is an audiobook that tells you how to keep from letting the little things in life drive you crazy. In thoughtful and insightful language, author Richard Carlson reveals ways to calm down in the midst of your incredibly hurried, stress-filled life.

You can learn to put things into perspective by making the small daily changes Dr. Carlson suggests, including advice such as "Choose your battles wisely"; "Remind yourself that when you die, your 'in' box won't he empty"; and "Make peace with imperfection." With Don't Sweat the Small Stuff... you'll also learn how to:

• Live in the present moment

• Let others have the glory at times

• Lower your tolerance to stress

• Trust your intuitions

• Live each day as it might be your last

With gentle, supportive suggestions, Dr. Carlson reveals ways to make your actions more peaceful and caring, with the added benefit of making your life more calm and stress-free.

In Pursuit of the Common Good or Guide to Investing in Gold and Silver

In Pursuit of the Common Good: Twenty-Five Years of Improving the World, One Bottle of Salad Dressing at a Time

Author: Paul Newman

Shameless exploitation has never been more fun nor done more good for more people than when done by Newman’s Own—the first green food company to use all-natural ingredients, and still the most successful.

It was 1982 when Paul Newman and A. E. Hotchner made their foray into local gourmet shops with bottles of their homemade salad dressing. The venture was intended to be a lark, a way to poke fun at the traditional way the market operates. Hurdling obstacle after obstacle, they created the first company to mass-market all-natural products, eliminating the chemicals, gums, and preservatives that existed in food at the time. This picaresque saga is the inspiring story of how the two friends parlayed the joke into a multimillion-dollar company that gives all its profits to the less fortunate without spending money on galas, mailings, and other expensive outreaches. It also serves as a textbook for foundations and charitable organizations looking to do the most good they can with what they have.

Told in alternating voices, Newman and Hotchner have written a zany tale that is a business model for entrepreneurs, an inspirational book, and just plain delightful reading.

Book review: The Sacred Art of Chant or Essential Oils for Horses

Guide to Investing in Gold and Silver: Everything You Need to Profit from Precious Metals Now

Author: Michael Maloney

"Throughout the ages, many things have been used as currency: livestock, grains, spices, shells, beads, and now paper. But only two things have ever been money: gold and silver. When paper money becomes too abundant, and thus loses its value, man always turns back to precious metals. During these times there is always an enormous wealth transfer, and it is within your power to transfer that wealth away from you or toward you." --Michael Maloney, precious metals investment expert and historian; founder and principal, Gold & Silver, Inc.

The Advanced Guide to Investing Gold and Silver tells readers:

• The essential history of economic cycles that make gold and silver the ultimate monetary standard.
  
• How the U.S. government is driving inflation by diluting our money supply and weakening our purchasing power
  
• Why precious metals are one of the most profitable, easiest, and safest investments you can make
  
• Where, when, and how to invest your money and realize maximum returns, no matter what the economy's state
  
• Essential advice on avoiding the middleman and taking control of your financial destiny by making your investments directly.

Table of Contents:

Foreword   Robert Kiyosaki     xiii
Preface     xvii
Introduction     xix
Yesterday     1
The Battle of the Ages     3
The Wealth of Nations     11
Old Glory     21
Greed, War, and the Dollar's Demise     29
From Deep in the Woods the Golden Bull Came Charging     39
Booms and Crashes     49
Today     55
What's the Value?     57
The Dark Cloud     75
The Perfect Economic Storm     99
Coming in from the Cold... To Gold!     117
The Silver Lining     125
Tomorrow     141
The Pendulum     143
Golden Castles     151
How to Invest in Precious Metals     155
Beware the Pitfalls     157
Who Are You, and What's Your Plan?     177
Let's Get Physical     185
Everything Is Illuminated in the Light of the Past     195
Resources     203
About the Author     207

Wikinomics or Gung Ho

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Author: Don Tapscott

In just the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superseded by collaborations on an astronomical scale.

Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success.

A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the twenty-first century.

Based on a $9 million research project led by bestselling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how masses of people can participate in the economy like never before. They are creating TV news stories, sequencing the human genome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding a cure for disease, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, or even building motorcycles. You'll read about:
• Rob McEwen, the Goldcorp, Inc. CEO who used open source tactics and an online competition to save his company and breathe new life into an old-fashioned industry.
• Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other thriving online communities that transcend social networking to pioneer a new form of collaborative production.
• Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaboratorsto form vibrant business ecosystems.

An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.

What People Are Saying

Tom Peters
I am very willing to proclaim that Wikinomics is undoubtedly the best picture so far of the new world of enterprise, collaboration, innovation, and value creation. This is a breathtaking piece of work.

Warren Bennis
Not only a superb book, but an essential one for anyone who wants to understand the major forces that will revolutionize the way organizations perform and the way they are led. (Warren Bennis, Professor of Management, Univ. of Southern California)

Eric Schmidt
Wikinomics heralds the biggest change in collaboration to date. Thanks to the Internet, masses of people outside the boundaries of traditional hierarchies can innovate to produce content, goods and services. In order to understand the opportunities this presents for companies, read this book. (Eric Schmidt, CEO Google)

Ross Mayfield
I love this book. Mass collaboration is most disruptive development in business in a long time. Consider Wikinomics your survival kit. (Ross Mayfield, CEO, Socialtext)

Gordon Nixon
Wikinomics will help you understand the changes, why they should be good news for businesses, and how to win in this new world. (Gordon Nixon, CEO, Royal Bank of Canada)

A.G. Lafley
No company today, no matter how large or how global, can innovate fast enough or big enough by itself. Wikinomics reveals the next historic step - the art and science of mass collaboration where companies open up to the world. It is an important book. (A. G. Lafley, CEO, Procter & Gamble)

Eric Schmidt, CEO Google
Wikinomics heralds the biggest change in collaboration to date. Thanks to the Internet, masses of people outside the boundaries of traditional hierarchies can innovate to produce content, goods and services. In order to understand the opportunities this presents for companies, read this book.

Warren Bennis, distinguished professor of Management, University of Southern California and author, On Becoming a Leader
Not only a superb book, but an essential one for anyone who wants to understand the major forces that will revolutionize the way organizations perform and the way they are led.

Brian Fetherstonhaugh, chairman and CEO, OgilvyOne Worldwide
Wikinomics illuminates the truth we are seeing in markets around the globe: the more you share, the more you win. Wikinomics sheds light on the many faces of business collaboration and presents a powerful new strategy for business leaders in a world where customers, employees, and low-cost producers are seizing control.

Tony Scott, senior vice president and chief information officer, The Walt Disney Company
A MapQuest-like guide to the emerging business-to-consumer relationship. This book should be invaluable to any manager—helping us chart our way in an increasingly digital world.

Noel Tichy, professor, University of Michigan and author of Cycle of Leadership
Knowledge creation happens in social networks where people learn and teach each other. Wikinomics shows where this phenomenon is headed when turbo charged to engage the ideas and energy of customers, suppliers, and producers in mass collaboration. It's a must read for those who want a map of where the world is headed.

Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman, World Economic Forum
A deeply profound and hopeful book. Wikinomics provides compelling evidence that the emerging ‘creative commons’ can be a boon, not a threat to business. Every CEO should read this book and heed its wise counsel if they want to succeed in emerging global economy.

John Chambers, president and CEO Cisco Systems
Wikinomics captures and explains the essential nature of the next generation of the Internet—how collaboration and communication technologies are democratizing the creation of value. An insightful and engaging book.

New interesting book: Encore Effect or Free to Choose

Gung Ho!

Author: Ken Blanchard

Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, co-authors of the New York Times business bestseller Raving Fans, are back with Gung Ho! Here is an invaluable management tool that outlines foolproof ways to increase productivity by fostering excellent morale in the workplace. It is a must-read for everyone who wants to stay on top in today's ultra-competitive business world.

Raving Fans taught managers how to turn customers into full-fledged fans. Now, Gung Ho! brings the same magic to employees. Through the inspirational story of business leaders Peggy Sinclair and Andy Longclaw, Blanchard and Bowles reveal the secret of Gung Ho--a revolutionary technique to boost enthusiasm and performance and usher in astonishing results for any organization. The three principles of Gung Ho are:

• The Spirit of the Squirrel
• The Way of the Beaver
• The Gift of the Goose

These three cornerstones of Gung Ho are surprisingly simple and yet amazingly powerful. Whether your organization consists of one or is listed in the Fortune 500, this book ensures Gung Ho employees committed to success.

Gung Ho! also includes a clear game plan with a step-by-step outline for instituting these groundbreaking ideas. Destined to become a classic, Gung Ho! is a rare and wonderful business book that is packed with invaluable information as well as a compelling, page-turning story.

Management legend Ken Blanchard and master entrepreneur Sheldon Bowles are back with Gung Ho!, revealing a surefire way to boost employee enthusiasm, productivity, and performance and usher in astonishing results for anyorganization.

Raving Fans brilliantly schooled managers on how to turn customers into raving fans. Gung Ho! now brings the same magic to employees. Here is the story of how two managers saved a failing company and turned in record profits with record productivity. The three core ideas of Gung Ho! are surprisingly simple: worthwhile work guided by goals and values; putting workers in control of their production; and cheering one another on. Their principles are so powerful that business leaders, reviewing the manuscript for Ken and Sheldon, have written to say, "Sorry. Ignored instructions. Have photocopied for everyone. I promise to buy books, but can't wait. We need now!" Like Raving Fans, Gung Ho! delivers.

Harvey Mackay

"Gung Ho! will become the preeminent book in energizing and empowering people as The One Minute Manager® has become for management and Raving Fans for customer service.

Tom Peters

Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles strike again. You need and business needs Gung Ho! This book will revolutionize any organization which adopts it, and those that don't won't survive. It's that simple.

Anthony Robbins

"Gung Ho! will make a difference in your life, and in the lives of all of those you have theprivilege to touch.

Stephen R. Covey

"Gung Ho! shows in three easy steps how to release the energy and enthusiasm of your whole team and focus it on success. A great book.

Phil Fontaine

Aboriginal North Americans are running banks and hospitals, designing computers and teaching in universities. They own and operate thousands upon thousands of successful businesses. It's nice to have the business-book world finally catch up to reality and give us Andy Longclaw, a man who saved 1, 500 jobs and may well save yours.

Sally Gore

I predict that like Raving Fans and The One Minute Manager®, Gung Ho! will become an invaluable tool in our team's pursuit of excellence. It conveys meaningful lessons about motivation, inspiration, and goal-setting that any organization can put to immediate use.

Publishers Weekly

Blanchard and Bowles lay out a three-step strategy for motivating employees: make sure they know why their work is important; give them control of how they do their jobs; provide encouragement. The authors related their story through the voice of a female plant manager who is said to have learned these truths from a Native American manager who had been told them by his grandfather.

The book reads like a fable, e.g., the first step is presented as 'The Spirit of the Squirrel.' The construct wears thin. Worse, the authors offer no specifics about how employees should work together (gung ho in Chinese), and what exactly management should do all day, except make sure all three steps recommended here are followed.

If in fact employees really are a company's most important asset, as managers everywhere seem fond of noting, one might wonder why such a three-step plan is needed at all.

Library Journal

In these days where the computer reigns supreme and management thought is presented in complicated models, there is something refreshing about management principles taught by allegory. Blanchard (The One Minute Manager), along with co-author Bowles (Raving Fans) recounts an organizational turnaround based on three Native American lessons. The problem inherent in the principles in this work, or any change program from weight-loss diets on up, is that there needs to be constant focus; success, if it is not continually renewed, is dissipated over time. Although new, this work makes a good preface and companion to Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox's The Goal -- Steven Silkunas, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Philadelphia

Library Journal

In these days where the computer reigns supreme and management thought is presented in complicated models, there is something refreshing about management principles taught by allegory. Blanchard (The One Minute Manager), along with co-author Bowles (Raving Fans) recounts an organizational turnaround based on three Native American lessons. The problem inherent in the principles in this work, or any change program from weight-loss diets on up, is that there needs to be constant focus; success, if it is not continually renewed, is dissipated over time. Although new, this work makes a good preface and companion to Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox's The Goal -- Steven Silkunas, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Philadelphia

Internet Book Watch

Inspirational, instructiveThis is a delightful fast-moving story with a lesson. The setting is a factory that is in serious trouble, under threat of closure,

because of narrow-minded executives and employees who simply aren't motivated to accomplish the job that must be done.

Our heroes are the new plant manager, a woman, and a wise Native American who heads one of the departments-the high-producing department-in the factory.

Drawing on the wisdom passed along by his grandfather, the department head (who also holds an MBA) guides, educates,

and inspires the new plant manager. Together they turn the situation from hopeless to exemplary and award-winning. The philosophies shared in this volume are powerful and apply to many circumstances, not just manufacturing.

This small book is deceiving in its size. There's plenty of white space on the pages. At first, the reader may get the impression that the design of the page layout is unusual and was probably done to bulk-up the book. Gradually, the wide margins seem to make the book easier to read, a page-turner. There really aren't any chapters, though there are some natural breaks in the flow of the story to give you stopping points. Be warned: you won't want to stop. You'll want to stick with this book to the last page . . . then give it to someone else to read.

The Road to Wealth or The Lexus and the Olive Tree

The Road to Wealth: A Comprehensive Guide to Your Money: Everything You Need to Know in Good and Bad Times

Author: Suze Orman

Completely revised and updated for the realities of today's world, The Road to Wealth is Suze Orman's most authoritative and accessible resource for every stage of your financial life.

Millions of readers have embraced Suze Orman's New York Times_bestselling The Road to Wealth since it was originally published in 2001. But the world has changed vastly since then, and it's more important than ever for readers to have access to accurate and practical answers to every question they have about their financial futures-questions Suze answers in The Road to Wealth. Compassionate, straightforward, and easy to understand, this updated edition gives readers invaluable advice about:

- Credit cards and the new bankruptcy laws
- FICO scores
- Changes in student financial aid
- Changes in the real estate market and mortgages
- Stocks and bonds
- The latest retirement investment strategies, including the new Roth 401(k)
- Mutual funds and annuities
- Wills and trusts
- Social Security
- Life insurance
- Disability and long-term care insurance
- Identity theft (and what to do if you're a victim of it)

With her exhaustive knowledge of all aspects of personal finance and her understanding of the role that money plays in people's lives, Suze Orman has written one of the most comprehensive resources of useful financial information in print today. Whether you're starting a new job or planning for your retirement, buying your first home or investing in the stock market, the revised edition of The Road to Wealth has the information you need to ensure that you make the most ofwhat you have.

Library Journal

The queen of money advice tells you how to get out of debt, plan your retirement, buy stocks, and much, much more. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Book review: Notes on the State of Virginia or Barack Obama

The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization

Author: Thomas L Friedman

As the Foreign Affairs columnist for The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman has traveled to the four corners of the globe, interviewing people from all walks of contemporary life — Brazilian peasants in the Amazon rain forest, new entrepreneurs in Indonesia, Islamic students in Teheran, and the financial wizards on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.

Now Friedman has drawn on his years on the road to produce an engrossing and original look at the new international system that, more than anything else, is shaping world affairs today: globalization.

His argument can be summarized quite simply. Globalization is not just a phenomenon and not just a passing trend. It is the international system that replaced the Cold War system. Globalization is the integration of capital, technology, and information across national borders, in a way that is creating a single global market and, to some degree, a global village.

You cannot understand the morning news or know where to invest your money or think about where the world is going unless you understand this new system, which is influencing the domestic policies and international relations of virtually every country in the world today. And once you do understand the world as Friedman explains it, you'll never look at it quite the same way again.

With vivid stories and a set of original terms and concepts, Friedman shows us how to see this new system. He dramatizes the conflict of "the Lexus and the olive tree" — the tension between the globalization system and ancient forces of culture, geography, tradition, and community. He also details the powerful backlash that globalization produces among those who feel brutalized by it, and he spells out what we all need to do to keep this system in balance.

Finding the proper balance between the Lexus and the olive tree is the great drama of the globalization era, and the ultimate theme of Friedman's challenging, provocative book — essential reading for all who care about how the world really works.

Thomas L. Friedman is one of America's leading interpreters of world affairs. Born in Minneapolis in 1953, he was educated at Brandeis University and St. Antony's College, Oxford. His first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem,won the National Book Award in 1988. Mr. Friedman has also won two Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting for The New York Times as bureau chief in Beirut and in Jerusalem. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Ann, and their daughters, Orly and Natalie.
 
 

Finance&Developement - Ian S. McDonald

In Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman's analysis provides a superb introduction to his topic the equivalent of a Globalization 101 for the general reader. His writing is vivid and topical but it is never dull and Friedman's insights are often penetrating.

Salon - Scott Whitney

This is an important book; not since Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital has a volume come along that so well explains the technical and financial ether we are all swimming through. Like fish oblivious to the surrounding water, we need a Negroponte or a Thomas Friedman to give us some instruction in basic hydrology — or, in the case of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, in globalization. Friedman sees globalization as the one big thing, the defining theory of the post-Cold War era. He cites the Lexus as the pinnacle of the high-quality production that the forces of globalization make possible, the olive tree as the symbol of wealth in pre-modern, "slow" economies.

By "globalization" Friedman means the cluster of trends and technologies — the Internet, fiber optics, digitalization, satellite communications — that have increased productivity and cranked up the speed of international business since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. During this period, the declining cost of communications has led to the "democratization" of finance, information and technology. If your company has replaced the switchboard operator with an automated phone menu, if you have ever received a FedEx package or sent an e-mail, you have felt the effects of globalization.

There is hardly a page in the book without an underlineable passage. (For example: "In the Cold War, the most frequently asked question was: 'How big is your missile?' In globalization, the most frequently asked question is: 'How fast is your modem?'") Globalization has created what Friedman calls the "Electronic Herd" — investors and speculators whose roving hot money "turns the whole world into a parliamentary system, in which every government lives under the fear of a no-confidence vote." Brazil knows the effects of such a vote all too well; so do Thailand and Indonesia.

Sometimes Friedman can be a rather grandiose name-dropper: "As I was traveling with Secretary of State Baker"; "when I interviewed former Indian Prime Minister I.K. Gujral"; "I ran this by James Cantalup, president of McDonald's International." But as foreign-affairs columnist for the New York Times, he really has talked to all these people. And he has used his remarkable vantage point to provide a readable overview that no academic or narrow-beat reporter could have given us. Occasionally, the habits he has developed as a columnist get in the way. His imaginary arguments between such people as Warren Christopher and Syrian President Hafez el-Assad are a little too cutesy-chatty, and his overly clever chapter titles ("DOScapital 6.0," "Microchip Immune Deficiency," "Globalution") can be annoying. Still, these are quibbles about a genuinely important book.

I have one reservation, though, that isn't a quibble: I would be embarrassed to lend this book to friends overseas. Friedman gets very rah-rah as an American apologist, and he poses no serious objections to the worldview that regards globalization as an international extension of Manifest Destiny. In the gushy tribute to American values he offers on his final pages, you can almost hear the Boston Pops swelling under the patriotic fireworks.

His message, though, can't be easily ignored. According to Friedman, there is no longer a first, a second and a third world; there are just the Fast World and the Slow World. And his message to the Slow World is simple and a bit chilling: Speed up or become road kill.

The New York Times Book Review - Josef Joffe

A brilliant guide for the here and now....Friedman knows how to cut through the arcana of high tech and high finance with vivid images and compelling analogies...A delightfully readable book.

WQ: The Wilson Quarterly - Robert Wright

Friedman...doesn't love globalization; he just thinks it's largely a good thing and, in any event, a fact of life....If this book becomes a basic guide to globalization for American opinion makers, as it well may, that will be a good thing.

Brill's Content - Michael Freedman

An American reading Thomas L. Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree would be hard pressed to feel anything less than exuberant about this nation's prospects.

Richard Eder

...[A] breathtaking tour, one that possesses the exhilarating qualities of flight and the stomach-hollowing ones of free fall....He can be eloquently outraged about the growing gap between rich and poor and the threat to the environment....For the most part...Mr. Friedman accepts the current version of the invisible hand: globalize, or the economic forces that be will condemn you to be left behind. —The New York Times

Gail Jaitlin

Thomas L. Friedman is scaring me. I am reading his new book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree , and suddenly I imagine I am in the middle of an IBM commercial, the kind with brightly colored images of Tibetan monks and African villagers tap-tapping away at laptops. I know that, in fact, Tibetan monks usually live meditative, ascetic lives, and that African villagers sometimes go hungry during times of drought. Yet I am swept up in these images, just as I am in Friedman's cheerful, optimistic book about the new global economy and how it will enrich all our lives.

Don't get me wrong — it's a terrific book. As in his columns for The New York Times, Friedman's writing is illustrative and clear. He uses catchphrases and stories to make clear otherwise complex ideas. For instance, the "Golden Straitjacket" is his term for what a country dons when it accepts the rules of a free-market economy — it accepts the promise of a rising standard of living (the gold) by tossing out old-fashioned ideologies like communism and socialism and accepting the rules (the straitjacket) of capitalism. A country can refuse to put on the Golden Straitjacket, and retain its old systems and values, and try to protect itself from the outside world. But the outside world gets in somehow, through the Internet and cable TV, and more and more citizens find themselves clamoring for the straitjacket. Eventually, the country must put it on, or risk having its citizens fall far behind the rest of the world (or worse, revolt, as happened recently in Indonesia).

Friedman's travel stories (he calls himself a "tourist with an attitude") are wonderful — they leave the reader hungering for a whole bookful — and his optimism about the new global economy is infectious. The central metaphor of the book, which gives the book its title, is the "Lexus and the Olive Tree." The Lexus, the luxury car, represents globalization. The olive tree stands for local concerns, cultural pride, and nationalism. With that pairing, Friedman has done a very neat job of explaining world politics as they now exist. The Cold War determined world politics until very recently; globalization determines them now. The relaxation of trade barriers and taxes, the accessibility of international markets through the Internet and Federal Express, the global stock market — all of these have made it possible for people to become more prosperous than ever before, no matter where they live. What this has done, however, is to make some people very nervous about losing their national or cultural identity. There is a tension now between people's desire for world culture and increased profits, and their desire to remain unique beings in localized cultures and traditions. Friedman illustrates his point by mentioning a few recent news events and telling us whether the Lexus or the olive tree was the winner. (The current war in Yugoslavia would certainly be an example of the olive tree winning out — despite all pressures from the U.S. and the world economy, the Serbs insist on fighting for Kosovo, their olive tree.) The pressures of the global economy seem to demand peace (you can't very well do business with India, for example, if your country is at war with it); Friedman is excited about globalization because he believes it will eventually bring world peace, as soon as the Lexus and the olive tree can be brought into co-existence.

It all sounds rosy, but... And now I come to my one big problem with Friedman's enthusiasm for this faster, barrier-free world. While I think his theories are sound, I am worried (as he does not seem to be) for those who get left behind. Not everyone in the Brazilian rain forest can afford a laptop computer; not everyone in East Lansing, Michigan, is young and supple enough to go through hours and hours of retraining to learn how to use the Net to their advantage. Friedman, who calls these people "turtles" because of their inability or unwillingness to move apace of the quickening world, seems to be saying, "So what? Too bad." The safety nets, such as welfare and unemployment insurance, are falling away, and to them Friedman says good riddance. He uses a jungle metaphor to illustrate the new world order: Everyone is either a lion or a gazelle. The lion wakes up every morning hoping he can catch the slowest gazelle; the gazelle wakes up every morning hoping that she can outrun the fastest lion. In other words, kill or be killed is the rule of the new global economy.

But do we really want our civilization to be run according to the law of the jungle? Friedman thinks so. "[T]he centrally planned, nondemocratic alternatives...communism, socialism, and fascism — helped to abort the first era of globalization [the industrial revolution]...[and] they didn't work." But Friedman is forgetting some of the other responses to dehumanizing industrialization — stunt journalism and labor unions, which banded together in the early 1900s to fight for shorter workdays, higher wages, less life-threatening working conditions, and an end to child labor. Friedman has a very short memory if he believes that pure, unfettered capitalism is necessarily a good thing.

Gail Jaitin is a writer living in Jersey City.

New Republic - David S. Landes

...Friedman believes in, approves of, and enthuses for globalization....A purely material account of economics is hardly the whole story....We can and must find sweeter, more winning ways.

Publishers Weekly

"In the Cold War, the most frequently asked question was 'How big is your missile?' In globalization, the most frequently asked question is 'How fast is your modem?' " So writes New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist Friedman (author of the NBA-winning From Beirut to Jerusalem), who here looks at geopolitics through the lens of the international economy and boils the complexities of globalization down to pithy essentials. Sometimes, his pithiness slips into simplicity. There's a jaunty innocence in the way he observes that "no two countries that both had a McDonald's had fought a war against each other, since each got its McDonald's." For the most part, however, Friedman is a terrific explainer. He presents a clear picture of how the investment decisions of what he calls the "Electronic Herd" — a combination of institutions, such as mutual funds, and individuals, whether George Soros or your uncle Max trading on his PC — affect the fortunes of nations. The book's title, in its reference to both the global economy (the Lexus) and specific national aspirations and cultural identity (the olive tree), echoes Benjamin Barber's Jihad vs. McWorld. Like Barber, Friedman takes note of what may be lost, as well as gained, in the brave new world: "globalization enriches the consumer in us, but it can also shrink the citizen and the space for individual cultural and political expression." The animating spirit of his book, however, is one of excitement rather than fear. Some of the excitement is the joy a good lecturer feels in making the complex digestible. Writing with great clarity and broad understanding, Friedman has set the standard for books purporting to teach Globalization 101.

Patrick J. Brunet, Western Wisconsin Technical College Library, La Crosse - Library Journal

A two-time Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter and current New York Times columnist, Friedman believes that with the end of the Cold War we are now in the era of the international globalization system. He defines globalization as the integration of finance, stock markets, nations, and technology and explains its dependence on computers, the Internet, transaction speed, and innovation. Friedman catalogs the benefits and pitfalls of globalization in a text so clearly written and with so many examples that one easily forgets that this is a book about economics. He makes a compelling case that international economics is changing and that globalization is inevitable and calls for both the United States and global business to pursue responsible capitalism that would make globalization more effective and fair. He ends with a call for businesses to understand that U.S. military and economic strength provide essential stability. Readers of Friedmans column will recognize many of these concepts. Well written, cogently argued, thought-provoking, and very highly recommended.

The New Republic - David S. Landes

...Friedman believes in, approves of, and enthuses for globalization....A purely material account of economics is hardly the whole story....We can and must find sweeter, more winning ways.

The Washington Monthly - Paul Krugman

Every few years a book comes along that perfectly expresses the moment's conventional wisdom — that says pretty much what everybody else in the chattering classes is saying, but does it in a way that manages to sound fresh and profound.....[This is] the latest in the series.

The Christian Science Monitor - Stephen Humphries

...Friedman deftly accomplishes the impressive task of encapsulating the complex economic, cultural, and environmental challenges of globalization with the sort of hindsight that future historians will bring to bear upon the subject.

The New Yorker - Nicholas Lemann

...Friedman has escaped the most serious occupational hazard for a writer on world affairs: the studiously airy, condescending, patrician tone. He may by hanging out with Them these days, but he's still on Our side. He has a born reporter's inextinguishble interest in everyhting, and a great sense of the telling details. His experience of the world's societies may be broad and thin, yet he quite often finds a fresh, memorable nugget inservice of his view that globalization is the "One Big Thing" in the world today.

Kirkus Reviews

A brilliant guidebook to the new world of "globalization" by Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist Friedman (From Beirut to Jerusalem, 1988). Like El Niño, globalization is blamed for anything and everything, but few understand just what it really is. In simplest terms, Friedman defines globalization as the world integration of finance markets, nation states, and technologies within a free-market capitalism on a scale never before experienced. Driving it all is what he calls the "Electronic Herd," the faceless buyers and sellers of stocks, bonds, and currencies, and multinational corporations investing wherever and whenever the best opportunity presents itself. It is a pitiless system—richly rewarding winners, harshly punishing losers—but contradictory as well. For nations and individuals willing to take the risk, globalization offers untold opportunity, yet in the process, as the "Electronic Herd" scavenges the world like locusts in the search for profit, globalization threatens to destroy both cultural heterogeneity and environmental diversity. The human drive for enrichment (the Lexus) confronts the human need for identity and community (the olive tree). The success of globalization, Friedman contends, depends on how well these goals can be satisfied at one and the same time. He believes they can be, but dangers abound. If nation states sacrifice too much of their identity to the dictates of the "Electronic Herd," a backlash, a nihilistic rejection of globalization, can occur. If nation states ignore these dictates, they face impoverishment; there simply is no other game in town. Friedman's discussion is wonderfully accessible, clarifying the complex withenlightening stories that simplify but are never simplistic. There are flaws, to be sure. He is perhaps overly optimistic on the ability of the market forces of globalization to correct their own excesses, such as environmental degradation. Overall, though, he avoids the Panglossian overtones that mar so much of the literature on globalization. Artful and opinionated, complex and cantankerous; simply the best book yet written on globalization. (First printing 100,000) (Author tour)

What People Are Saying

Patricia Pomerleau
How do you move forward and build a worldwide operating system that respects people's homes and still empowers individuals, countries, and organizations? The book doesn't give all the answers, but it brings up the issues (Patricia Pomerleau is President and CEO, CEOExpress.com).