I cannot recommend this book enough. As a work of philosophy, it belongs up there with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Dhammapada, anything by Plato, Balthazar Gracian, and the Book of Proverbs in the Bible. And like the Meditations or the Dhammapada, it can be applied to one's daily existence in truly important ways. It should be included in Philosophy courses in college or even High School courses if at all possible. Get this quote: 'These days negative karma is causing the entire environment to be filled with evil, and individuals are preoccupied with unwholesome influences. This produces deceptively attractive situations that are a mixture of good and bad, where words and actions contradict each other.' Britney Spears, are you listening?
This is a reference book for life.

Ably translated by John T. Davenport, Ordinary Wisdom: Sakya Pandita's Treasury Of Good Advice is a compendium of profound, down-to-earth, and practical Buddhist advice on the art of living, as pertinent today in the West as has been for many centuries past in the East. Sakya Pandita uses proverbs and stories to address the basic questions of human existence and purpose. His inspiration and advice are hallmarked with humor and grace as he comments on such universal issues as achievement and failure, anger and kindness, deceit and desire, intelligence and foolishness, wealth and wisdom. Ordinary Wisdom is an extraordinary contribution to the growing library of Buddhist literature available for the Western reader.

Davenport presents a practical roadmap for process improvement and process innovation which I have found very useful as a practitioner. Although not prescriptive, the text provides practitioners with useful very insights which can form the basis of an organisation's business process innovation/improvement methodology.

This is a well-written book on the subject of process or business reengineering. It is written in a non-technical language, wastes few words, and covers the entire spectrum of topics that are essential to a successful reengineering effort. The discussions place a significant emphasis on the role that information or computer technology play today in the reengineering effort, particularly how this technology can facilitate the overall effort. I found the book largely sticking to the overall thread however at times it did become a wee bit academic to flip through the sections. All in all, a very good read.

This book is really about digitizing business processes. The book begins with an intriguing question: what makes some companies better at digitizing processes than others. The authors argue with various best-practice case studies that a digitization blueprint is a focal point (e.g., easy to do business with, every day low price) executed on service platforms.

According to the authors, Amazon.com is winning because it has a very sophisticated service platform capable of digitizing the complex order-to-fulfillment process. The authors in different middle chapters describe how the different enterprise applications (CRM, SCM, Financials) are migrating with the aid of Web Services to becoming the delivery platforms for digitized services. For example, SAP CRM 4.0 is really a multi-channel customer facing services platform.

The book ends with several chapters on how to construct a services blueprint. I really liked the chapter on how Six Sigma techniques can be used in improving portals and digital processes.

Highly recommend this book for professionals and consultants who are looking to make sense of the various buzzwords like Composite Applications, Business Process Management, and Service-Oriented Architectures like SAP's Netweaver and ESA. Technical people should avoid this book.

this book give a specific and detailed method of planning and execution for those planning further automation. it gives examples and real world methods used by industry leaders. it is a must read for those not used to dealing with automation concepts. it also discusses failures and why they happen.
you customers will be satisfied by nothing but your best- so be prepared.

No one plays with the assumptions of a reader in terms of genre, plot, image, or even sentence structure like Davenport. This book is one of his best. And in terms of the general American literary scene, this book is one the greatest!

The line above, taken from a Davenport story, perhaps suggests the sense of vibrance flowing through a "typical" Davenport story: one not only gets to go to market, but there are Gypsies there as well! Arguably the most striking and unusual stories in this collection are those that pivot around three famous men: Lawrence of Arabia [disguised as Airman Ross] in "August Blue"; Thoreau in "The Concord Sonata"; and Soren Kierkegaard in "Mr. Churchyard and the Troll." But Kafka reappears here as well, sending postcards to a young girl whose missing doll is, according to Mr. K., embarked on a world tour. And in each of the two long stories we meet a just-adolescent boy, discovering his own sexuality and that of the world around him, with--in one case--tragic and heart-breaking results. Can every story be "the best"? Maybe not, but in this collection, Davenport comes very close

My four year old got this from a friend as a Christmas gift. Although the story-with-a-twist is ridiculously simple for adults, my daughter wanted me to read it aloud "again, again." It has quickly become one of her favorite bedtime books.

This is my daughter Hannah's first Teletubby book and she enjoys "mimicking" each Teletubby as we "read" the book together. She particularly enjoys Laa-laa's funny way of hiding the custard that she's eating. Now, it does not matter if the book is dog-eared and torn, because Hannah knows the book by heart! She'll be two on July 19, 2000.

Unexcused Absence is a wonderful combination of scripture and experience that encourages the reader to be immediatley obedient to God.

Wow! What an awsome and truthful book. This is just the book for everyone and anyone that wants to learn how to hear from God and put that very word to work in your life, so put your pride aside and just let God be God, so He can reveal to you His Word. Although this book was very convicting and sometimes hard to read, (because of the pride thing) it was so helpful in my current walk with God by teaching me how to stop all the excuses and start being obedient and start putting in action what God has called me to do in my life. Alot of Christians say "I just don't know what God has called me to do" or "I just don't here from God". Well let me tell you something, just read this book and all those type of questions will be answered. Thank you Jesus for your Word through this wonerfully written book.

The authors state that they wrote the books with two primary goals in mind. An opportunity to learn and use the statistical software package SPSS and to provide an introduction to a variety of statistical analysis procedures commonly used by graduate students, researchers and other professionals.

They have succeeded extremely well on both occasions.
The book has made a tremendous difference in the analyses of data collected for my master's thesis. The text is well written, well presented and in logical order. The examples, described in the book but also provided on a diskette, are very useful and clearly explain which procedures to use for which analysis and why. The illustrations in the book closely match the examples and the section "Interpreting SPSS --- results" is extremely useful in analyzing one's own results. One minor drawback: the text assumes total lack of computer literacy and goes to embarassing length in explaining how to open and save files. It can safely be assumed that most people using books of this kind would at least know that much.

All in all, a great book and a real time saver!

This book is very easy to read. It covers most topics you will meet in basic statistics. Very good explanations in procedures and outputs. Although you can not find any statistical formula in this book, use it with conventional statistics text books will be very benefical.

I happen to be Mrs. Wachtel's son. I am 13 years old and yet still enjoy reading it day after day. She put a lot of hard work into it. Young children will love this book. It will improve their imagination.

My good friend is Charlie Wachtel... and his mother is shirley... i saw all her drafts and junk... its a realllyyy good book and its actually made for charlie! 5 stars!

Greg Davenport has been there and done it. A former U.S. Air Force SERE instructor, Davenport has practiced what he preaches. If you're looking for a book that tells you how to survive and flourish in the wilderness, read this one. Though not the most hyped, Davenport is one of the best survival instructors out there. This is the "Simple and Direct" version of living in the wilderness.

Gregory Davenport's Wilderness Living is a fascinating and informative guide that looks beyond merely surviving in the wilderness and envisions the art of living with nature in the long term. Among the many skills taught in detail are hunting and trapping techniques, meat preservation, improvising clothing, finding water, designing shelter, and making tools and baskets. The black-and-white illustrations clearly depict the braiding, trap-building, knot-tying and many other abilities described. Wilderness Living is indispensable prefatory reading for any nature enthusiast who wants to learn how to live on their own, away from the comforts and conveniences that saturate modern civilization!

From ghost stories to love stories, alien worlds to Tibetan nuns, there's something for everyone in this book. The collection includes mainstream, mystery, supernatural and science fiction stories that are well-written and moving.

"Call of the Bocor" brings 1890 New Orleans to life with rich detail, and "Engineering Beauty" is the poignant story of a woman who finds that the price for everlasting beauty is a lot higher than she had anticipated. S. Stirling Davenport has a smooth, lyrical quality to her writing and an even-handed attention to detail that makes her stories a joy to read. This up-and-coming author is definitely one to watch.