This is another of those silly books written, no doubt, by some middle manager who wouldn't know how to even begin to handle problems. Where do all these breauacrats come from?

This book is presents the "change" don't "improve" school of change management, and presents it well. The author starts with the management sage of our time: "Problem Solving Gets You No Where"... Peter Drucker. Then he moves on to explain why dramatic transformational change is so important.

What I really liked about the book was:

+ the author's tips on using metaphores in creativity,
+ the discussion how most management fads are just focusing on problem solving and not transformational change.
+ the use of humor in business (this was VERY GOOD).
+ how to analyze conversations.

On the negative side, the book appeared a little on the breezy side. Lots of cute remarks instead of substance, but overall I got so many good ideas from the book, that I have to give it a 5 ranking.

The author comes across as someone very knowledgeable and interested in your application of this information. There's a lot in this book that you won't find in others.

John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX

This is a self-published book, and the production quality is not so good, if you are used to glossy hardcover books. However, it is jam-packed with excellent material and good examples to help - and guide - managers to explore their own - and their company's future.

The author has been a collaborator of Joel Barker, widely recognised as the Paradigm Man who wrote Future Edge (and an earlier book, Discovering the Future: the Business of Paradigms).

Just like Wayne Burkan who wrote Wide Angle Vision, the author further expands the paradigm phenomenon with more new business examples, insightful real-world observations and also thought-provoking ideas drawn from his own professional experience.

The author's writing is crisp, succinct and clear, and he includes several thoughtful questions at the end of each chapter for reader's reflective responses. I enjoy reading books that poses questions to readers. They make you think about what you have just re!ad, and also reflect on possible actions you may consider to take in your personal or professional context.

Together with Future Edge and Wide Angle Vison, I strongly recommend this book to be included in your personal library if you want to be a paradigm buster - to be precise, to be a strategic explorer.

The author's other book, 'Get Out of Your Thinking Box' is also worth exploring.

I have just finished this third art of the Elric Saga, given to me for free by a friend that loves fantasy as much as I do. I've reviewed each as I finished them. You can read the other reviews if you'd like, by clicking on my name. I must warn you they are not pretty, and I am loosing patience with the series.

I caution those of you that are not fans of the other books, this read may not be worth your while. This is the worst of the lot so far, and that's saying a bit. The first tale was weighted down with many, many, literary albatrosses, and the second, while lightening a little on the cheesy fantasy rhetoric, and actually taking some interesting twists, continued the insulting trend of revealing too much of future plots, and then taking to long to get to the fufilment of these dropped hints of prophecy. This third book totally trashes any progress made by the second, and gives birth to a few defects in the main character that are unforgivably preposterous given his earlier actions.

First we are given the unattached (yet relevant, Moorcock hastens to inform us,) tale of Aubic carving lands from chaos, then we are given the ridiculous conclusion of Elric's tale involving his cousin yrkroon (or some such ridiculous name.) For those not in the know, Elric is almost murdered by his cousin for his throne, and returned from near death to topple his foe in the first tale, only to willingly relinquish his throne at the end to this same traitor, saying essentially that the playing field was level once more. Now he's returning for "revenge" (Revenge? For What? Gee, I gave you my throne, and now I don't wnat it back, but I will kill you for accepting my offer. By making elric not care about his throne at the end of the first book, the author diffuses the need for any "revenge" here in the third, and this makes any motivation for vengance, and actions that follow from it, non-sequitors.) Anyhow, we must put that aside, for Elric , rightfully or no, does desire revenge, so in a singularly bold move, Elric decides to destroy his own homeland in a thirst for blood and vengance. In the process he kills his only love, which he really didn't care about anyway. But in any case, he acts shocked, although her death could hardly have been a suprise, he should have known it was coming, because he himself (in the guise of his future self, Erikose,) told him (Elric) he would kill the woman he loved. Or are we to believe that Elric is as silly as Moorcock thinks his readers are? In any case, perhaps you should put that aside as well. In the flight from his city, as his troops are routed, he betrays his companions in a feat of totally uncharacteristic, and therefore unbelievable, cowardice. (Elric earlier alligned himself with three or four guys he met on a boat and had no real allegiance to, and fought a pair of otherworldly sorcerers for no real reason at all, in that case many of his companions died, and Elric had as much chance to fear for his life then as he does during the rout of his forces, yet now he flees where before he stood fast? I don't think so. Get some constancy in your character, he's a man who will stand, or one who will flee.)

Anyhow, put all of that aside too. After this fiasco, Elric goes out in search of his never outlined Destiny, (That's what "Weird" means in the title, you know. It's not just alliterative, or maybe it is...,) which seams to simply be Elric wandering around becoming not-involved with various women he can never love, and adventures he doesn't care to resolve or has no motivation to begin, yet he does anyhow, and attempting to kill various conjured things and failing and then calling on his gaurdian for help, and sometimes getting it, sometimes not, but always Elric gets hints and etc dropped his way from his pet god, about his greater bolder destiny. Well get to it I say! We're what, three books in an no word of it? How long must we suffer this tripelike filler to reach the meat of the tale?

Ah well, suffice it to say that this third book is simply awful, and only true Elric fans could find anything redeeming about it. With some great reluctance, I will start on the fourth book.

Michael Moorcock, The Weird of the White Wolf (DAW, 1977)

The third book in the Elric series introduces the reader to Moonglum, Elric's longtime companion (and, thanks to AD&D's Deities and Demigods book, the companion most readers can't imagine him without). Much of the second novel moved away from the events of the first, and concentrated Elric's character on other adventures. The Weird of the White Wolf brings Elric back to Melnibonë along with Moonglum, their friend Smiorgan Baldhead, and an army of raiders bent on overthrowing Yyrkoon, who stole the throne when Elric left Melnibonë for a year to travel the world. For those wondering, whether you've read the book or not: the "weird" of the title is an archaic definition of the term, given by Merriam Webster as "One's assigned lot or fortune, especially when evil." And when he finds it, he's not all that happy about it. But that's to be expected when one's antihero has a crisis of conscience, I guess.

Certainly not a slow book by any means, nor a weak one in the context of the series. And it's definitely a necessity as a prelude to what comes after it. But I still felt there was something missing here; some pieces of description left out, a few places where things could have been filled in better. All of the Elric novels are short, to say the least (Stormbringer, the last and longest of them, clocks in a 217pp.), and feel as if they could use some fleshing out; this one, however, gives that feeling the most. One wonders if the brevity of them was not the insistence of the publisher, and what Moorcock would do with them, given the opportunity (a la King's unexpurgated edition of The Stand). Loads of fun, and highly recommended for fantasy and non-fantasy readers alike, as is the whole series. ****

I must say that Elric of Melnibone is one of the most tiresome heroes or even antiheroes I have ever come across...his self-pity, fatalism and incessant whining and angst are easy to identify with, but can also be quite heavy-going...this is not to say that this book is bad, it is exceedingly well written, and Elric is an interesting character, i like the emphasis on his demon origins and natural ancestral cruelty especially...I liked this book better than the Sailor on the Seas of Fate, though both that one and Weird of the White Wolf are a bit disjointed since it was originally a number of stories written by Michael Moorcock for fantasy magazines. I think i liked the first book the best, because I loved the vivid portrait he painted of the ancient, decadent Island of Melnibone, with their pre-human inhabitants and elaborate, cruel pleasures...they were evil all right, and you knew they were doomed as a race, but they certainly had style. I was very disappointed that Imrhyrr fell in the Weird of the White Wolf...I felt a great civilisation and era were gone forever. The humans just dont seem as interesting...too clumsy. As for Elric, I believe the tragedy of him is that he is the main source of his misery and undoing...Watching him go down is almost painfully annoying...you want to shout at him or something to stop being such a fool. Its also is a bit boring and monotonous hearing his constant whining, but it somehow makes it even more tragic. He knows he's doomed and yet he doesnt quite have the courage to commit suicide and end it all. His indecision defeats him. He's sort of like Hamlet that way. All in all its a great read...Michael Moorcock is a fantastic writer. I sometimes read him just for the great descriptions

The same information you will find in any of the thousands of success books around today : set your goals, focus on them, persevere.The author has put an eastern spin on it to differentiate his book from others, although it adds nothing. One must realize that the first edition of this book was printed in 1956 so most of what is around today probably drew from this book.

If you are seeking to change your life - read and follow the message in this book. Collier reveals some monumental information about our lives and how to change them. Life, as nature, is really very simple. Man complicates his life until it becomes unbearable. Collier provides ancient guidance on proper diet, exercise, and how to get and keep what you want from life. Follow the simple practices of this book and you will see your life transform before you!

It may be a perfectly wonderful book but reaching the slopes of Mount Erebus is no feat since it is right outside of McMurdo Station. As a person who has spent time working at all 3 Antarctic Station, I find the book description overblown. I'm sure the book itself is full of wonderful photos as Antarctic is truly a stunning place. However, if someone is looking for an adventure story, I doubt if this covers it.

This book is enjoyable and at times profound. It is a nice introduction to the continent. My only wish is that the book had more pictures since I will never see the antarctic. I especially wish more pictures were taken of the exployers' huts.

I'd hoped for a nice selection of crafts. While a few of the items listed are interesting and "crafty" (the quilt, bead crafts, straw hat, hood), most are defintely stretching the definition. I wouldn't consider a garden or a loaf of bread to be a 'craft'... and does anyone REALLY need instructions to figure out how to make a button string? The original Little House books explain quite well how to make the orange flower and button lamp. (And what you'd do with a decorative button lamp is a puzzle to me anyway.) We learn how to make the tassles for Mary's bedshoes, but there are no instructions for making the shoes themselves.

This book is a great opportunity to learn about crafts and stories through the eyes and hands of a pioneer child. Children will enjoy the stories from Laura Ingles Wilder. With each story, a craft is illustrated with colorful pictures and detailed step by step instructions that are very easy to follow. A great teaching tool and a good book to add to your shelf.

Reminiscent of Frederic Tuten's "Tintin in the New World: A Romance," Jay Cantor takes a comic long since unpublished and attempts to reinvigorate and modernize its characters in novel format. Both "Tintin" and "Krazy Kat" flirt with postmodernism. Both Tuten and Cantor soak their characters in a philosophical bath. And most notably, both authors suggest a ripe and healthy sex life would serve as the tonic for the comic characters' incompleteness, flatness.

Why do this to "Krazy Kat?" Who can tell from the insipid prose Cantor offers up in this confusing, frustrating novel? Although there were some humorous scenes in the book (notably the image of comic strip characters creating a terrorist organization in order to win the rights to themselves from Hearst), generally the book was weighed down with too much Freud, too much babble, too much abstract.

And it's nothing like the comic strip, "Krazy Kat," which was sparse, mostly silent, and dreamlike. Sure it had surrealistic scenery and an ambiguous plot, but it defied explanation, and that was where its beauty lay. Cantor, apparently oblivious to the strip's finest quality, proceeded to trample over its delicate balance by overanalying.

Don't think. You can only hurt the ballclub.

I hear Jay Cantor's "The Death of Che Guevera" is a good book.

I guess I'm just a big softie and a hackneyed sentimentalist, but there was something about this book that got to me. Recasting Krazy and Ignatz and hateful, hurtful people in an ugly 20th century landscape devoid of the magic and beauty that radiated around Coconino County was a real blast of cold water. I loved the opening, in which Krazy gives up comics after witnessing the first atomic bomb blast, but the outright savagery that characterizes the rest of the book wears very thin. Ignatz goes from being mischievous to being a complete bastard in no time, and his plans to shake Krazy back into work through constant humiliation and degradation are creepy. I guess the point is that our century has degenerated to the point where something as magical as "Krazy Kat" could never thrive like it did in the first half (fans ranged from James Joyce to Picasso to Woodrow Wilson). But you don't need Jay Cantor's arty postmodernist tract to tell you that. Just turn on the six o'clock news, dollin'.

Krazy Kat is an odd duck of a book. Cantor recasts the comic strip characters with imagination, and the book is entertaining from start to finish, with some bizarre directions. I liked the setup, in which the gang has not worked for years because Krazy became disenchanted after witnessing an atomic test (and became an admirer of Oppenheimer and his anguish). Krazy is an innocent with a sort of Boopish hidden sexuality, and Ignatz is a clever schemer. The fifth panel, in which they imagine themselves as humans in an S/M relationship, is pretty wild. The novel has that sterility that comes with clever postmodern work - a couple days after reading it I had forgotten completely about it. But it certainly was fun while it lasted.

If you don't care about lines, if you don't need any texture of sound, if all you want to read about is the family concerns of a bourgeious existence, then you might enjoy this book. For the rest of us, who look for poetry that is crafted and relevant to the soul, this is a waste of time and paper.

"The Neighbor" is Collier's third book of poems, and it is also my favorite Collier collection. The poem called "The Barber" is as close to a perfect poem as I believe I've ever read. Collier is concerned with human vulnerability in this poem, and how none of us can really know with certainty what anyone else is truly capable of doing, good or evil. And at the end of that poem, I am right with the boy in the barber chair, and I smell everything in the barbershop, and I feel near tears when that brush is whisked across the face: it's an obvious physical threat (the brushing of the brush), and a knowledge of vulnerability and fragility, and a clean sense of joy, relief, and separation from having gotten through the haircut. The poem "Robert Wilson" is also deeply moving, about a boy who is an outcast, the object of ridicule and constant teasing, and how the speaker, as a witness and a former participant is changed when he sees the harassed boy's shoes "abandoned at our feet." We all know those feet (ours and the harassed boy's). The Neighbor is a book of core intelligence, and dark power that radiates outward, at us, until we know ourselves better. This book is a masterpiece.

this is a book that both benefits and suffers from extensive research. It is entirely undigested and frequently wrong on the facts. While the writing is good during the telling of each anecdote, the failure to develop any characters or for that matter a plot quickly makes reading tedious. A shame, because there is a lot of first-rate raw material here. The author just doesn't evaluate it critically, or tie any of it together.

Collier's work is one of the finest examples of what good historical narrative can be. He uses historical information to write history in an engaging and interesting manner. Collier's work is one of the definitive works on the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919. Critics of this book will probably say the same things critics of Herodotus said. Collier does lack statistics, numbers and charts that people have come to associate with history, but makes up for it in his narrative.

This is a superb companion to Alfred Crosby's work on the Influenza Pandemic. Collier's focus is more global and excludes the American experience while Crosby focuses almost solely on the American experience. Collier writes in the style of Herodotus while Crosby's leanings are more to a Thucydidian style of writing. One of the two books is bound to appeal to almost everybody. Reading both books, though, gives one a more comprehensive view of the event.

If academic history is not to your taste, read Iezzoni or Kolata's work on the subject. They borrow heavily from Collier and Crosby, but write with a more public audience in mind.

I read this book when it first came out, thirty years ago, and I'd forgotten most of the details. But I remembered enjoying it a great deal, so I set out to find it again, and Inter-Library Loan came through. (They usually do.) It's only 250 pages, a pretty fast read -- and now I know why it had stuck with me all these years.

Brian Chaney is an epigrapher in Hebrew and Aramaic documents, translator of a recently discovered scroll at Qumran which has upset a lot of people. He's also a demographer and futurist and has written a report for the government laying out probable trends for the near future. (The story begins in 1978, which was also the near future for Tucker, who feared the repressive trends he himself observed in the late Sixties.) Chaney gets drafted for a secret project run by the Bureau of Weights and Measures (a nice touch), which has managed to build a forward-traveling time machine. He and his two colleagues -- a no-nonsense Army major and a freewheeling Navy commander -- will journey to the end of the 20th century to see if those trends have panned out, to bring back information to allow the government of 1978 to lay its plans to deal with future problems. But the President, naturally, sets the target of the preliminary field trial at 1980; he wants to know whether he's going to be reelected. Oh, yes, the politicians will never hesitate to take over science for their own ends, and Tucker knows it. Then there's Katherine Van Hise, known as "Katrina," who is more or less the managing director of the project at the local level. Chaney is very attacted to her, and so is Commander Saltus. And so they make their jumps, singly and one at a time, to 1999 and to 2000 and to sometime in the 2020s (I think) . . . and nothing is as they thought it would be.

This is an intimate drama of Armageddon in Illinois, a reduction of global catastrophe to manageable proportions. The style is quiet and perfectly straightforward, the imagery is both subtle and apocalyptic. And the three time travelers -- and Katrina -- will turn out to be unexpected heroes.

Arthur Wilson Tucker, known throughout science fiction fandom as "Bob," was not a scientist like Asimov or Benford. He was, in fact, a motion picture projectionist from Illinois who wrote mysteries and science fiction stories and novels on the side, beginning in 1941. This book and 'The Lincoln Hunters' are certainly his best (and best known) work, but there was another whole side to him -- the raconteur and noted wit who hung out with the "ordinary" fans at WorldCons, and who held forth at hotel room parties on the benefits of bourbon ("Smoooooth!"), and who cheerfully distributed business cards with only his name on one side and the words "Natural Inseminations" on the reverse. (I still have my card from MidAmericon in 1976.) The fans loved him and he loved them. In fact, Bob Tucker was the first Fan Guest of Honor at a WorldCon (Torcon in 1948). And when the room parties burned themselves down to glowing coals in the small hours, you could find him on someone's balcony arguing literature and political theory and social dynamics as astutely as any Oxford don. He had a longtime interest in Near Eastern archaeology which is obvious in this book. I expect most younger sf fans have never heard of Tucker, and that's their loss.

Year of the Quiet Sun is notable as the novel which won the first place Campbell Award in 1976. While not as well known as the Hugo or Nebula, the Campbell award is quite prestigious, and is chosen by a jury based on literary excellence, not just popularity.

Despite its award, Year of the Quiet Sun is not very well known. It is interesting and well-written, but it's particular plot hasn't aged well, and it contains things which may seem anachronistic or politically incorrect. A major thematic element is race, especially the divide between blacks and whites in America. When Tucker wrote this book, he projected the difficulties of his turbulent time into the future and predicted things would get worse. He describes race riots in Chicago of the late 1990s which result in the black parts of the city being barricaded and completely segregated racially. Black militants and white U.S. soldiers prevent either side from crossing over.

The picture portrayed of black militants, and their violent hatred of whites, is particularly ugly. This is in no way a racist book, but it confronts these issues head on and is certainly politically incorrect by today's standards.

Dating it perhaps past the point of continued popularity is the fact that the book is about time travel, but the time travelers only journey about twenty years into the future. Thus, they visit a time which is already past. The world war instigated by a Chinese-Indian-Arab alliance and the subsequent collapse of the United States has, of course, not happened, but one can still read this as alternative history.

The out-of-date events didn't really bother me, although the idea of time travelers from the 1970s boldly going forward to the year 2000 did strike me as amusing.

The main character is a civilian scholar and renowned demographer who has published a controversial book about the origins of the Bible's Book of Revelations. This creates some tension between him and the two military men who work with him on the government's time travel reconnaissance project.

The book contains a rather unusual time machine (it must be plugged into an electrical source), some military action, speculation about the near future (now past), a compelling romance, and lots of interesting discussion about society and world politics.

While I'm glad I read Year of the Quiet Sun and consider a worthwhile work of science fiction, this is not a book I would strongly recommend as a "must read." It may appeal to some readers for historical reasons or because of its specific topics. This is a very well-written book, which continually presents unexpected but logical surprises. Its time travel plot is very original, with twists and developments I haven't seen elsewhere. Nevertheless, there are many books available which are more important classics or simply more enjoyable for contemporary readers.

The greater value of the book Archaeology and Potterry of Naska, Peru is an "other" discourse to be found not in the written lines, but rather between them, easily perceivable to the knowledgable reader. The source that informs the tale, yet to be told, is a book listed twice in the bibliography: Peru Antiguo: espacio y tiempo. It is the entry recorded under the name Lorenzo Rossello that leads the willing and wanting researcher toward a Peruvian perspective, ignored by the editors of this book: a Chanka style, pre-Wari. Sustained attention, directed toward that bibilographical entry, as well as that of the late peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mexjia Xesspe, mentor of Rossello, suggests a contradiction with the following statement, "Tello, at about the same time, inverted the sequence, calling the B phase pre-Nazca, and the A, Nazca; but he did not elaborate or press his view" (Carmichael 1999: 26). In fact, an article written by Mejia Xesspe deals with the puquios of Naska and Chanka (see Mejia Xesspe, 1946, Folklore No. 16, Lima). That is why a wider encounter with the theme Nazka/Chanka could bring with it the necessary and serious questioning of the methodology of contemporary academia and its relation to politics, of post-processal archaeology and so-called Post Modernism, itself.

Those searching for a ground from which to begin to understand can find it in the article "From Social Archaeology to National Archaeology" up from domination", American Antiquity Vol. 64 No. 2 to be released May 17 by the Society for American Archaeology.