Written with great clarity, "The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing" is a phenomenal book. It begins with an explanation of strategic pricing, and proceeds to cover competition in the market place, segmentation of buyers, pricing and the marketing mix for industrial and consumer goods, as well as the psychology of pricing. Also covered are models for determining price sensitivity, implications of sales staff price setting and negotiation, and finally, legal aspects of pricing.

After reading this book, you will understand the pitfalls of pursuing market share at all costs and common mistakes businesses and sales people make when setting or negotiating price. You will view your current pricing structure and strategy in a new light, and be able to spot the weak spots. You'll have a better picture of how to attract the right buyers, those that can be served profitably.

The book indirectly touches on topics covered in Co-opetition, and Thinking Strategically, as well as elements of the Theory of Constraints (see Eli Goldratt's "The Goal" and "It's Not Luck" or "Management Dilemmas" by Eli Schragenheim)

I can't recommend this book highly enough. As for the other reader who states:

"After reading this book, I was able to talk circles around the $20,000 "marketing consultant" we were considering."

believe it, it's that valuable!

For anyone involved in business this book gives very practical advice on not only the methodology for pricing new products but also changing the strategy of one's existing pricing policy.

Look for a sustainable competitive advantage, maximise contribution margin, concentrate on value and profitability and then market share will follow are some of the key philosophies contained in the text. Concerning the value of this book, it is worth the price alone just for the chapter on costings and formula for calculating what level of sales a company can afford to lose/must gain after a price increase/decrease in order to break even.

A common complaint about business books is that they are all OK in theeory but contain little in the way of explanations of how to implement - this book however offers not only theory and case study examples but also practical instructions on what needs to be done to improve pricing strategy. Overall very, very impressive and a must read for anyone involved in finance, sales or marketing functions. As someone has already said these guys really know their stuff and it works!!

If you sell ANY product or ANY service and your competition reads this book before you do, watch out! You absolutely MUST get and read this book. It's LOADED with solid, meaty real world techniques that can really help you. You will probably find this book a real eye opener. It will help you make wise pricing decisions and show you unexpected ways to save your business from what could otherwise be failure. Don't let the price tag keep you from getting this book. It's worth many times its modest price. Get it, read it, and profit from it.

How many books have I read and said to myself something like: "Wow - this book is a real eye opener." But now if you ask me what the book did for my life or what the book was about, I can't tell you. These books I have read only once.

On the other hand, I have probably read The Land of I Can ten times. And I will read it again many more times. The pictures go very well with the text.

What struck me most was the page: "Ask yourself WHAT? Not How? Not When? Just WHAT?" After talking to the author, I realized I have usually been in "The Land of Fear." Instead of focusing on taking one small step, I get all caught up in worrying about how and when.

Being a complicationist, this books really appeals to me. Susan Gilbert has simplified her message so much that it strikes you in the face, it makes you ask yourself: "Okay, so I've heard this before, but am I doing it? Do I really believe this? What am I doing about my dream?"

This book may well become the bible of the human potential movement.

The Land Of I Can: An Adventure In Life is an inspiring, informative, and original book of self-empowerment ideal for readers of any age or background seeking to live their life to the fullest. Susan Gilbert's engaging and thought-provoking text of poetically expressed observations are wonderfully enhanced with the artwork of Jill E. Holden. The Land Of I Can will be read over and over again -- and become treasured gift from passed along from friend to friend.

This is a wonderful little book. It is simple, uplifting, inspiring, and reassuring. The gentle artwork is a joy to get lost in. And the message is both profound and simple at the same time.

The Land of I Can is a timely reminder that life doesn't have to be complicated or overwhelming. It can be as simple as a clear vision and a faith that the vision can become real.

The book is short, but its message is eternal. You can read it in a very short sitting, but you can meditate on its meaning for hours. It is a teaching tale--it continues to grow in meaning once you include it in your own awareness of life.

The Land of I Can is suitable for almost any audience. It makes a great gift for yourself and for anyone you know who is setting out down the path for the first time or trying to get back on it for the umpteenth time.

Karen's poems has opened the door to more understanding of each I Ching hexagram for me. Each poem stands on its own and I often read them to my students. She gives powerful images and emotions to the meaning of each hexagram. I have consulted the I Ching since I was 16 years old (over 30 years now) and her book sings to me. One of her poems will be in my upcoming book: I Ching For Teens (Fall 2001, Inner Traditons & Bear and Co.,). Her book could accompany any I Ching consultation.
This book of poems shows that there are many ways to convey, read and translate the I Ching while still holding on to its message of hope, compassion, personal integrity and cosmic truth.
Thank you Karen for adding to the meaning of the I Ching with your poetry...

My first contact with Karen Holden was through seeing her visual art. Upon first seeing those paintings, I was struck by the intensity of feeling that she could express with brush and canvas. Wanting to live with some of her artwork, I arranged to meet with her. My first few meetings with her were as artist and client. Over time we became friends, and through that friendship, I came to realize how much Karen put her soul into her art.

In her BOOK OF CHANGES, I can see that same deep personal interaction between Karen and her poetry as I saw between Karen and her art. Poetry, in all its forms, is, arguably, the most personal way of expression possible. When a poet shares his or her poetry with us, he or she is sharing something of the self. This is certainly true here.

In Karen's introduction she quotes Lao Tzu as follows: "A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever he wants." She goes on to state: This is my goal -- to be led into this work and be enriched by it." I think that she has not only enriched herself, she has enriched all of us.

Each verse of Karen's poetry is paired with one of the sixty-four hexagrams of the "I Ching." The "I Ching" can be read as a philosophical text, or one can consult it much as the ancient Greeks consulted the Oracle. Karen's poems have sprung from her years of interaction with the "I Ching" and, in their own way, have added another dimension. I think that we can see this from the following short poem from the book:

I CHING #55: FENG: "Abundance" -- "If Clarity is within, and Movement without, one has greatness and abundance."

Karen's poetic pairing with #55"

"IS ENOUGH"

"birds sit on the tree -----outside my window

like the last persimmons ----- of winter ----- beautiful fruit"

Quoting one poem (and one of the shortest at that) out of sixty-four is, of course, unfair to the book. After all, things taken out of context lose something that can be achieved only by putting them back into context. To do this one must read the entire book, including the Introduction. Read, contemplate, and meditate if you want the full impact.

Karen Holden's poetry is a treasure of insight and courage. Her imagery lingers in the mind, and every page makes life seem richer.

found this book at an estate sale for 25 cents....truly a beautiful find.

After a doctor's appointment in Houston I dropped by a small privately owned bookstore I thought looked interesting. As the owner and I spoke she said she could tell I would love this book because of my love of gardening,birds and nature--but that obtaining it would be very difficult. I asked them to put me on a search list and a few months later it arrived. The author's drawings and observations as she watches nature are captivating. Edith started this journal in 1906 and it was never shown to anyone until it was discovered on a shelf in an old country home and then published. There is a sweetness and innocence in the writing that's hard to describe. The pages are like a rather like a thick piece of manilla paper and if I had an extra copy of this book I would frame page after page. I purchased it sight unseen and consider it one of my great treasures.

This book was a bestseller when it was originally published in the 1970's, and there was a good reason for it. Edith Holden, the artist of this work was a very accomplished watercolorist. This book is filled with her views of the fruits, beauty and wonder of nature. It shows the flowers, birds and insects of the natural world as they appear over a year accompanied by appropriate poems and quotations.

The watercolours are simply breathtaking. The closest thing to this book that I have seen is illuminated manuscripts, but the effect here is quite different.

The publishers have been very wise with publication. You get a page-by-page facimilie in full colour, reproducing the original manuscript. They have not cluttered the book up by reproducing pages and putting their own text next to it.

If you run across a copy of this pick it up and let it take you away to another world.

If you think the natural world is boring, buy this book! It can serve as either a reference or a source of countless hours of enjoyable reading. The phenomena described are eerie, fantastic, or simply weird, and all of them are interesting. The book illustrates beyond doubt how far we have to go before we completely understand what happens on this planet.. An example, ball lightning has been observed for many centuries, even photos exist, but only recently has a complete scientific explanation been forwarded. Mainstream science has indeed overlooked many of these phenomena, whether because of their rarity and the consequent lack of data, their sheer multitude, or fear that they might be associated with fringe paranormal groups (this book clearly isn't). But, that doesn't prevent you from reading and speculating about them.

When I first noticed this Handbook Of Unusual Natural Phenomena, it was laying on a book shop's discount table. And I didn't realize that it was about to become one of my most precious possessions. I refer to this book whenever I see any of nature's best sky shows. The cover of my 1977 edition, on a hardback I have carefully covered with plastic, shows a hand upraised in the dark. There are two types of lightening in the sky, and the Aurora Borealis, then a miniature rainbow emanates from each of the fingers spread out. Inside the book are hundreds of other drawings, accompanied by clearly written text, to define and discuss many kinds of unusual occurrences. At first you should just casually go through this book, getting a sense of all the things cataloged, because it will prepare you for noticing far more than what most people realize is happening over their heads. This is not a book about unidentified flying objects, unless comets with halos will do, but it can be just as exciting to identify natural mysteries. When you see rainbows, for example, you will be able to discern what's common or rare. Some rainbows are doubled, some join clouds together, some connect with objects, some only seem to connect to objects. Different categories for sunsets are also defined. I once kept a written log of the sunsets I saw, describing each day's display for a month. Although most of them were simply pleasant to watch, and not really that weird, on one occasion the round shape of the sun became a near perfect square! As I saw this from an area in San Francisco called the Sunset District, a local newspaper editor appreciated and published the sighting. In that article I credited this book, and later received a nice letter from Mr. Corliss. The square shaped sunset, which appeared on a Valentine's Day, generated so much interest that I wished I had brought along a camera. Then there was another notable natural event, one which occurred while I was visiting a friends house. I stood on his back porch after the sun had set, and noticed two peculiar lines which seemed to be dividing the sky into three parts. These stretched like telegraph lines all across the sky, just as if the Egyptian sky goddess, Nut, was responsible. I wiped my glasses and looked away, but each time the lines appeared. Finally I asked my host to come out, without any descriptive hints, to tell me what he saw up there (Just in case I was the nut). The sighting was soon confirmed, as he also saw the lines, and he ran in to alert his wife. When I got home I opened up this book and read the paragraphs which applied to this particular phenomena, where lines divide the sky. I was even more surprised that Corliss listed it as a highly rare occurrence. This may be because the lines are rather thin, and easy to miss. I kind of tingled all over, because I knew I was fortunate enough to experience something that few people even knew existed. Each person who gets this book is going to use it a bit differently; appreciating it mostly for whatever they can apply it to personally. A Japanese lady I know looked through my copy and soon joyously shouted out: "I've got a photograph of that!" She had been vacationing in Hawaii, and taking special notice of a rainbow which was doubled, managed to get a perfect photo. I received this as a gift, and it sits in my book alongside a photograph I shot of some rare clouds (This handbook has one similar to mine and defines it as a "Morning Glory"). Photos became the only place markers I use for this particular book. Although Corliss didn't mention it, a natural phenomenon is associated with Bolinas, California, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. One day a man was sitting in his car reading a sports page, he was parked on a cliff overlooking the ocean outside Bolinas (Where Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds was filmed). After a while he peered out over the ocean and realized he was looking at the illusion of an island. It was sitting just a short distance offshore. This island even had castles with turrets and walls, and a jeweled sparkle almost like an advertisement for Disneyland. The man got out of his car and shouted down to a park ranger and a tourist. They too acknowledged that they could see it. At the Bolinas Post Office the postmistress told a reporter she had seen it on a previous occasion. None of the witnesses, nor the reporter, had seen Corliss' book; so the story was published without anyone knowing that the scientific name is Marine Morgana. Good luck, and good hunting.

Read this book. Forget UFO's, MIB's and other stuff like that. The Real mysteries are the ones that Nature produces and our own scientists have no explanation for. This book documents almost all types of natural phenomena for the past couple of hundred years! I highly recomend this book to anyone that has ever wonderd about something that they have seen, like a horizontal rainbow or a blue ring around the moon. This is a totally awesome book.

This was one of the first books I ever read
I am thirty-two and still have a copy.
A story about a small cat who starts out
chasing other cats and being mean.
He is adopted by a Fire Station
and becomes The Fire Cat
One day he rescues a small kitten
and becomes a good cat.
This is still my favorite book ever!

My not quite 3 year old son discovered this book in the preschool library and ADORES it. This year his birthday party is at a fire station, and although they probably won't have a fire cat there, he will have one at home forever more when he opens the gift of his very own copy of Fire Cat.

Unlike other reviewers, I never heard of this book and at first thought it was kind of boring..as I read and reread it to my son, I discovered the beauty in the story and understand why he is so taken with it!

It will be wonderful to keep this in his permanent library and remind him of it someday when he has a child of his own!

This is the first book I can clearly recall reading on my own (I'm 39). My Dad used to read it to me, and one day I read it to him. I remember him proudly calling my Mom into the room to hear me read it from cover to cover. I recently discovered a copy at the "used books for sale" section of my library, and excitedly rushed home to read it to my five year old. He loves it. This is a conceptually brilliant book for children. This is a great book for several reasons. First, it teaches the virtues of kindness and hard work. Second, it has superbly crafted simple sentence construction, and it's written to facilitate early reading by using word and concept repetition. Third, it has great illustrations and easy-to-read type. It also has three chapters, which was a new concept for my son.

This is one of the all time great early reader books. If there is an early reader in you life, get it for him or her!

Nick's work on this book certainly shows his love for his subject. It's easy to read and the practical exercises helped me make tough decisions to change my attitudes and led me to work in my new creative and fulfilling heart-centered career. This is a personal book that makes you feel that Nick Williams is with you as your guide to intraspective, honest and authentic decision making. A must-read for anyone wanting to re-evaluate their current work experience.

Nick's work on this book certainly shows his love for his subject. It is easy to read and the practical exercises helped me discover my new creative and fulfilling heart-centered career. It is like having Nick Williams as your personal guide to intrapective, honest and authentic decision making. A must-read for anyone wanting to discover their purpose and move into new life-enriching areas and be empowered to take "the risks" in making changes.

As the instructor of a course related to this subject, I read everything out there on finding your "true vocation." I have found Nick Williams' approach to be the most comprehensive and heart-centered of all that are currently published. Nick approaches finding the work you were born to do as a task not separated from the rest of life, but rightly so, a question of "living" rather than "working." As his many practical exercises convey, our culture needs to change the way we think about work; the way we've confronted this problem in the past has not brought about joyful results. Nick's suggestions for self-discovery allow for the possibility of work being a joy rather than a job. If you choose one book on this subject, I would definitely go for this one.

I've read what seems like a ton of books on the Civil War. It seems that there must be nothing left to learn, but of course that's not true, there's more. Two newspapermen from Concord, New Hampshire, are the latest entrants in the Civil War history competition, and their book, My Brave Boys: To War with Colonel Cross & the Fighting Fifth, is one of the best Civil War regimental histories ever written. It's amazingly well researched, wonderfully authentic, and well-enough written I was sorry it ended.

The Colonel Cross of the title was Edward E. Cross, a newspaperman from New Hampshire who had worked on newspapers in Ohio and Arizona before the war started. He was an American party member (the "Know-Nothings") and something of a bigot, but very strong-minded on the subject of the preservation of the Union. When the Civil War began, he immediately returned to New Hampshire, and through political connections was given command of the state's Fifth regiment. He immediately recruited as many experienced soldiers as he could, turned them into drillmasters, and began to transform his crowd of farmers and townsmen into soldiers.

The training paid off. In its first fight, the regiment acted as if it were composed of veterans, and the authors make it clear that it didn't lose this composure until long after Cross' death at Gettysburg, when it was weakened by draftees (from other states even!) who didn't want to fight, and weren't properly trained. The heart of the book follows the regiment through its baptism of fire in the Seven Days, the Second Bull Run campaign, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, where as I said, Cross was killed. The narrative keeps you apprised of the course of the battle well enough that you understand the context of the regiment's actions and the opinions of the participants, without bogging down, and the battles themselves are recreated here as well as it's ever been done. The authors have, through contacts they have in the state, found several people who have collections of letters from participants to relatives back home. These give the narrative an immediacy and authenticity that might otherwise have been lacking.

Lastly, the maps are gorgeous. This is the sort of thing that's difficult to do in a book like this, and often you're presented with a blurry recreation of something from the era, overburdened with detail and almost illegible. The authors made a happy choice in allowing Charlotte Thibault, who's apparently the newsroom illustrator at the paper they both work at, to draw the maps. She's done a marvelous job: they convey the situation in the battles, and the Fifth's position and actions in the fighting, while being clear and easy to understand.

Pride and Travis have produced one of the best books on the Civil War in a good while. It'll be interesting to see if they have anything else up their sleeves.

With "My Brave Boys," authors Mike Pride and Mark Travis have set a new standard for throwing compelling illumination on a slice of the American Civil War. There've been sweeping works on the subject, military analyses, biographies and all the rest But the real untold story has been the war's impact on small communities, states and the men from them. Until now. Pride and Travis have turned their considerable journalistic skills -- both work at the Concord(NH) Monitor -- toward history, putting what amounts to a local news story in broader context. The result is highly readable, meticulously reported book. "My Brave Boys" should appeal to historical researchers, students of the Civil War and those with a more casual interest who just like a good yarn well-told. The media impact on the war and the men fighting it as told through New Hampshire newspaper editorials and accounts is an intriguing sidelight. We who grew up with Vietnam coming into our living rooms each night may appreciate more the ways in which war is brought home. For Americans, the Civil War was the first conflict to be so graphically displayed in word and picture to the general audience -- via newspapers and magazines such as Harper's Weekly. The authors have not ducked tough issues, such as the rampant racism and ethnic bias of the times. No sugar-coating of history here. The story of the 5th New Hampshire is haunting and so very human. It is a story of tragedy and triumph. And strikes a chord that continues to echo in our collective memory yet today.

"From the beginning, the story of the Fifth was not merely a war story, but mainly a human story," write Mike Pride and Mark Travis in their superb new book about the exploits of New Hampshire's legendary "Fighting Fifth" Regiment in the Civil War. In fact, it is the humsn dimension of their narrative that so distingishes it among Civil War accounts. Their extensive research into town and state archives, period news accounts, memoirs, and little-known letters takes them well beyond a catalogue of dates and skirmishes. Piecing together their sources to construct the unfolding events of the Fifth's experience, the authors give us rich insights into the personalities and thoughts of Colonel Cross and his men, showing us what war actually felt like to its participants from battle to battle, and from day to day. Not that war-making is this book's only subject. Some of its most affecting passages are from the letters written by soldiers to the wives and families they have left behind. In one striking chapter, the authors relate the surprising pronouncements the men of the Fifth made against the very blacks they were fighting to emancipate. While there is plenty to satisfy the student of the Civil War in the Fifth's story, told here for the first time, you don't have to be a Civil War buff to enjoy this volume. I'm not one myself; yet the fully developed characters and dramatic descriptions of events on the battlefield had me turning pages entranced. It's a wonderful book.

I bought this book years ago and foolishly gave it away. I recently repurchased it and am glad to have it back. I give it four stars instead of five because I figure five stars should be reserved for John James Audubon.

For the most part I like the older edition (ISBN 0-03-021026-7) better. It is printed on yellowish paper with darkened edges, purposely made to look a bit aged. The colors are darker and the detail on the illustrations shows up better. But this 2001 edition has its good points too. It's printed on pure white paper so even though some of the pictures look a little washed out, the colors look clearer and brighter, not so muddy. So some people might prefer this new edition.

There's a biography of Edith Holden, out of print, that I'd be interested to read. (Edwardian Lady: The Story of Edith Holden, by Ina Taylor.)

When i found out that the Country diary of an Edwardian Lady was to come back in print after more than five years in the wilderness, i remembered feeling elated, why, because Ms Holden and her talents was the best thing ever to have happened to the book world,and this new edition showing what the diary looked like at the time it was written is the best ever, she put rural warwickshire on the map in a way no other author could have or will do, the book is not only a teaching of nature (remembering that Edith was a teacher) but also a portable art gallery of in my opinion some of the best surviving examples of her artwork, i have long been a holden devotee (the word fan is reserved for rowdy pop stars)i have and always will treasure this beautiful book and its sister publication the nature notes of an edwardian lady, we love this book perhaps for its nostalgic charm for all things turn of the century, but more importantly because most of ediths beloved nature trails around her home in Olton Hollow, solihull now no longer exist, so my advice, buy this book and give it pride of place in the cabinet

I purchased this book as part of our home school lesson. I wanted to teach the children about nature journaling. We live in a fabulous area with many of opportunities to observe nature.

The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady looks exactly as she had written it, beautiful drawings with proper name labels as well as her observances of the mother nature.

This was a joy to look through and read. Very inspirational and it goes well with my growing collection of Edwardian, Georgian and Victorian books.

I wasn't sure if I liked it at first, and almost gave up on it. Instead I kept at it, and once I was past the first couple of chapters or so I found that I began to enjoy the story. I became interested enough in the characters to want to know what was going to happen to them. And interested enough to want to follow the story to see where it was going. I didn't, perhaps, enjoy it quite as much as some of the Tony Hillerman books, but the series does have some very positive possibilities.

You can't go wrong with any of the Margaret Coel books. They are enjoyable to read and you can hardly believe when you've come to the end that it came so quickly. Fortunately, you can buy them all and continue to the next one in the series. These people become as real to you as your own friends. Don't stop at one - get them all.

An unlikely couple of sleuths team up in this mystery to uncover murder and theft. Father John O'Malley, a Jesuit priest at the Wind River Indian Reservation, gets "his nose into other people's business" and so begins a caper that already has three sequels. His alter-ego help comes from Vicky, the Arapaho Lawyer, surnamed Woman Alone. Their disparent skills become all that is needed in finding out the murderer and the one responsible for the great land theft against the Arapaho Nation.

But what makes this unusual novel so likeable is its rich respect for two faiths and cultures: the Native-Americans and the Jesuit priests. Coel provides a synthesis of faith in the midst of an entertaining mystery and that is talent. And it makes the reading of the tale a multi-level experience of pleasure.