I looked over the Norton Sixth Edition the other day...

Approximately a decade has passed since I used the Fourth Edition Norton Anthology during my undergraduate studies. At that time I sensed that there were two types of English professor: the traditionalist, who was committed to teaching the traditionally accepted great American writers; and, the revisionist, whose mission was to infuse female and minority writers at whatever cost. It seemed to me that the revisionist had been behind the Fourth Edition, given that there were many apparent changes to the American literary canon for what I believed to be for the purposes of political correctness and social change. My suspicions were later confirmed when a visiting Berkley professor, my American Lit professor's friend, admitted that this in fact was not only the goal but "a great responsiblility".

Of course, there is nothing wrong in introducing new writers, who during the preceding decades, because of there gender, race or ethnic background, had been overlooked and not read or studied. However, because there is finite number of pages in a given work, when a new writer is introduced it is at the expense of the older, traditional writer who ends up giving away his pages. In fact, in that course, entitled American Literature, which was a required course for all English Lit majors, we did not read any Twain, no Fennimore Cooper, and no Poe. Instead we were assigned Native American chants, slave writings, and various female authors. Just to reiterate, there is nothing wrong with studying Native American chants, slave writings, and female writers, but we must ask ourselves is it worth pushing some of the traditionally accepted fathers of American literature aside?

Since then I have looked over the Fifth and now Sixth editions and have seen the revisionist's grip tighten. It seems that with every edition there are more decisions made based on politics rather than merit. The canon is being revised and the good folks at Norton believe that it is their duty to do so.

Nevertheless, although it is clear that I am not a disciple of the revisionist, I nevertheless recommend the Norton Anthologies because although they contain plenty of mediocre works, they are nevertheless interwoven among the works of American masters, and it is difficult not to see who is who, regardless of what Professor Stillahippy says.

While the Rainbow of Mathematics covers the entire realm of the History of Mathematics, it ignores the layman or "nonmathematician." Covering the early developments of all the main branches of mathematics, the author requires the reader to have an extensive background in the field. Unlike most good histories of mathematics that focus on each individual and their accomplishment, this book takes a tour of the concepts of math with only a brief glance onto the lives of the great mathmaticians who shaped the world. I would only recommend those with a moderately good mathematical background to read this book. While this book glorifies the concepts, the one who wants to view the history of mathematics and appreciate the individuals involved will not find this book agreeable. Unlike Men of Mathematics by E.T. Bell, the chapters are arranged by concept instead of person and I found myself drowning in a sea of technical mathematical ideas in the later chapters that deal with the calculus.

I enjoyed the book. However, I did find that the impressive coverage of Norton's illustrious racing history came at the expense of the technical and corporate history. Some may not find this a fault, but I was looking for more information on production models. And there simply wasn't enough mention of the twins with which us Yanks are most familiar (I can't afford a Manx but a Commando is a possibility...) If you are a fan of the singles that made Norton a great name in motorsports, you will like this book. It is well written and informative.

This book is a pretty straight forward and easy to carry in lab coats during calls on pediatric floor.The author tried to incorporate most of the common problems faced by the house officer on the call. The organization of priorities and therapy is excellent.The only negative aspect is that it does not replace any textbooks or manuals in pediatrics; one has to read other books for individual diseases and their management. Overall it is absolutely worth it's price and useful for junior pediatricians

This book at times reads at an advanced level, but for the most part is fairly well written. The only real major complaint i have, is that it did not address anything on peer-peer networks. I will be using this book to prepare for my MCP in windows.

This 1993 Harvard Business Review article, by Harvard Business School professor Robert Kaplan and David Norton, president of Nolan, Norton & Co., builds on their 1992 article 'The Balanced Scorecard: Measures that Drive Performance'. In that article, the authors made it possible for managers to express and measure operational performance.

Acccording to the authors, the balanced scorecard is not a template that can be applied to businesses in general or even industrywide. Therefore, the authors introduce the use of the balanced scorecard within three companies in three different industries - Rockwater (subsea engineering and contruction company), Apple Computers (computers), and Advanced Micro Devices (semiconductors). The authors provide a step-by-step guide to building a balanced scorecard and explain very shortly the link between the balanced scorecard and external reporting. The article concludes with an interview with Larry Brady, executive vice president of FMC Corporation (diversified company in the US), who explains how their organization has implemented the balanced scorecard.

I was disappointed by this article. The weakness in this article is that it is useless without reading the authors' first article on the balanced scorecard. In my opinion this article just provides the reader with examples of the introduction, implementation and use of the balanced scorecard within companies. Okay, the authors provide a useful step-by-step guide for building a balanced scorecard, but that does not make up for the lack of new information/knowledge on the subject. My advice: Get their first article 'The Balanced Scorecard: Measures that Drive Performance, and then read their 1996-article 'Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System' or their 1996-book 'The Balanced Scorecard: Turning Strategy into Action'. The article is written in simple US-English.

For practical purposes, this picks up where _Star Ka'at_ left off. Jim and Elly Mae were adopted by Tiro and Mer, respectively, and rescued from the threat of atomic war on Earth along with refugee cats (descended from Ka'ats who were stranded on Earth thousands of years ago). These two children show potential for learning the abilities of Ka'ats - Elly Mae in particular has a greater talent for mind-send than humans have shown for hundreds of generations.

After being taken to Zimmorrah, the Ka'at homeworld, in suspended animation, they are processed much like the rest of the newcomers. They're decontaminated, given their own quarters, and sent to school. Here the curriculum is centered around learning to use psychic talent, something even Ka'ats have to be taught, and important facts about dangerous animals and the like on Zimmorrah - for instance, the abandoned city of the Hsi, another intelligent species that once shared the planet. Cause of death - xenophobia, which flared up at the discovery that Ka'ats were an intelligent species. All Ka'at technology was originally derived from Hsi technology (any questions about how Ka'ats manage a spacefaring civilization without hands are covered by this volume).

As it turns out, though, the machines that the Ka'ats now operate by thought will not work for the children. They are dependent on the older Ka'ats even for the food they eat. Then Jim has the idea of running away to explore the old Hsi city...

The children's rash decision to try to enter the old city can be explained (considering that they're only about 10 years old), and they quickly discover that it was *not* a good idea. There are other points that can't be explained away quite so easily, though. The senior Ka'ats explained very carefully to Mer and Tiro in _Star Ka'at_ that they would be held responsible for the children's actions, so the conclusion of this book seems too painless, even if you accept how easily some really dangerous situations were resolved. Also (nitpicking, now) why did the ship land, let the kids out, *then* call them back inside and move to the landing facility? Why not just go through decontamination in the first place?

All in all, this is an OK sequel to _Star Ka'at_ (which is the best book in the series to date).

As recounted in _Star Ka'at_, the Ka'ats discovered Earth thousands of years ago as they explored the galaxy. They befriended humanity, some of whom could 'hear' and understand their mindspeech, and some Ka'ats settled on Earth. After many years and wars in which the humans who could communicate with them were killed, the Ka'ats had to abandon Earth in the face of human persecution, stranding some of their own kind in the process.

Upon their cautious, secret re-exploration of Earth in the present, the Ka'ats, alarmed at a human political situation that might lead to nuclear war, began systematically evacuating as many of their people as they could - all the cats whose mindspeech was clear enough to understand the rescue summons. But in the process, two Ka'at scouts - Mer and Tiro - found two human children, Elly Mae and Jim, who had enough innate ability at mindspeech to be capable of full partnership with the Ka'ats, and the scouts adopted the children, insisting that they, too, be rescued. (Both kids were orphaned, one very recently, and without family, so this was OK with them.)

In the other volumes of the series, we've seen some of the trouble that the kids have had adjusting to life on Zimmorah, but, of course, the cats were able to settle down happily with no problems, right?

Wrong. The Elders are alarmed that some cats form a distinct subculture among their people: hunters with a taste for sport in a world where hunting is culturally unthinkable, who refuse to completely abandon the uncivilized ways they needed to survive on Earth. Having had a terrifying reminder, while reconnoitering Earth, of the dangers of factions coming into conflict, the Elders now propose an experiment: that some of the Earth cats should join an expedition to re-establish contact with a long-lost Ka'at colony on another world, where dangerous situations may make their survival skills valuable.

Mer, Elly Mae, Jim, and Tiro accompany the expedition as well, to find a world on which the plant and insect life no longer quite matches their records; the insects are now of gigantic size! (Many of the insects are unimaginatively similar to familiar insects on Earth, making it relatively simple for the explorers to identify dangerous ones and think of ways to cope, at least at first).

The surviving descendants of the Ka'at colony, when found, need help. (They don't want to be evacuated, by the way.) Apparently the Ka'ats weren't the only explorers who thought this world would be a good place to settle...

There Ain't No Justice, Just Us (which is, I might add, a great title) is the story of David, a veteran of the '60s protest movement who now finds himself living out of place and time in an impersonal Chicago. Just as the city seems to be slowly dying, so has David's once firm faith in Marxism. Unlike his former comrades, David has remained an activist and as a result, his marriage his crumbling and he risks seeing his children taken away from him. Hoping to rediscover his political faith, David takes a job at ChicagoLard, a Hellish factory where he helps to organize the racially divided workers into organizing a strike that leads them into increasingly heated conflict with both their bosses and their own union. There Ain't No Justice, Just Us is an unabashedly political novel. It wears its Marxist sympathies on its sleeve and, like a modern day Upton Sinclair, author Gregory Alan Norton peppers his plot with scenes in which his characters discuss and defend socialism against premature reports of the movement's death. What sets Norton's novel apart from other political novels is that Norton never allows his ideology to overwhelm his story or characters. As opposed to other Marxist writers, Norton allows his politics to come through the character as opposed to crudely shaping his characters to force them to conform to political theory. As a result, Norton is an honest enough writer to create human capitalists and flawed socialists instead of creating a black-and-white polemic. Ranging from his own sometimes rather crude narrator to the strikers' flamboyant attorney Lexy (who comes across as everything Bella Abzug was supposed to be) to the book's most complicated character, a Neo-Nazi mechanic who turns out to be the most committed striker as well as the least trustworthy, the book is full of memorable and vivid characters who capture the reader's interest. Whether or not one agrees with Norton's politics (and, as my other reviews should make obviously, I am one hundred eighty degrees to the right of the author), its hard not to care about these characters and impossible not to become emotionally involved in the outcome of their struggle. This is a book that I would recommend to any open minded reader interested in modern political fiction -- one need not agree with Norton to admire the craft and skill with which he delivers his message. Gregory Alan Norton is not a household name and There Ain't No Justice, No Just Us is an independently-published, "underground" book. However, that doesn't change the fact that Norton has managed to pull off what so many more bestselling authors have continually failed to accomplish. He has written a proudly and defiant left-wing novel that can impress and enthrall even as right-wing a reader as myself.

Smith does a nice job of showing Hoover as both a politician and a dedicated fund raiser for a variety of charities. He explains in detail many of the problems Hoover faced while in office, and that the depression was not "cured" by FDR as many people would have you believe. Obviously, there is an element of bias in Smith's work given that he is the curator for the Gerald Ford museum and a devout Republican. But, he does provide a balance of Hoover's good and bad points; apparrently he wasn't the easiest to get along with which makes sense given his difficulty in dealing with Congress. I wish the book had more detail regarding Hoover's upbringing, although Smith in the introduction noted that was not his intention. I think more background into Hoover as a child and his religious heritage would help put some of his actions and philosophies into better perspective. Overall, I enjoyed reading the book and have gained more respect for this "uncommon man."