Overall, this was a good survey of Mexican history. The writing style was easy to read--not as dense as most history text books-- and was informative on more than just facts. This books covers pre-Colombian history, the Conquest, the fight for independence from Spain, and the evolution (and revolutions) that occured after independence. Also, this book goes into more than just historical fact by expressing ideas that spread through the country, cultural changes, and political trends. This is a great place to start learning about Mexico and, with the recommended reading lists at the end of each chapter, a good reference if a person wants more details on a specific subject covered in the book.

I used this book when i took
my Mexico course at the local
college. The historical literature
is well researched and documented.
This is the best guide if one wants
too know Mexican history. Any one
who says that this book is light, I
suggest you watch the news on the Televisa channel
station or Azteca Television. The literature will
not give you the details of why the economy has failed.

everything is said positive, reserved, and with class.
literature is recommended.

one has to see that mexico is just about the rich vs the poor.
the rich vs the yankees, and the white rich, mestizo rich vs the poor in todays society.

it has been a conquered land, but through revolution and evolution the country has truimphed, work through its leaders.

it was said in the news that the mexicans will not allow the "dollar" control the economy, mexican economy, but the attitude of nationalism is changing for the better in us mexico relations.. . . . .the issue of the european union, the united states of europe is bound to change things soon. . . .

I grew up in Mexico. For years, the best source on Mexican history was a 4-volume set published by the Colegio de México, the authoritative and ultra-elitist "Mexican Harvard." It was the best because nobody could read it (no one dared criticize this monstrosity)!
The Course of Mexican History is magnificent in contrast. Since I found the fifth edition this year, you can be sure that the authors don't neglect their incredible labor!
I believe the contents and lengths of chapters are well balanced. You probably have to live in the country to understand her history, and you might only get the gist of it.
A truly remarkable find!

I came into this book assuming a book on the history of Jack Welch's early years with GE. It ended up being much more and I was pleasantly surprised at the overall educational value of the book.

The book is broken down into three "acts" which recount the years of Jack Welch - when and how he was made the CEO with GE, the early years of layoffs, the early resistance to his ideas, reorganization of GE, the need for globalization, and eventual acceptance of his ideas as he empowered GE's employees. Welch's ideas of empowering the employee encompassed such things as "boundarylessness", strong values, leadership, simplicity, and productivity. As the book progresses, the reader is provided with the real world GE examples that qualified Jack's ideas and their results. Nor does the book hold back from describing Jack's missteps and describes the lessons learned.

Overall the book was a good read. The examples read as stories that both entertain and educate. Welch's ideas, as presented in Control Your Destiny, are probably now considered common sense business practices. The ideas seem simple today, yet were revolutionary for that time as you'll read.

The end of the book provides a manual that can be used to carry out a similar revolution with your business and employees. I didn't really work my way through it - it seemed more appropriate for larger organizations.

Tichy is a guru of all gurus and he has a winner with this book. Highly recommended.

'Control Destiny or Someone Else Will' is deeply insightful and comprehensive examination of GE's transformation. It contains detailed, valuable lessons for all those interested in Jack Welch and his GE, as revolutionaries.

Noel M.Tichy and Stratford Sherman write, "The old way, exemplified by Henry Ford's production line, calls for top managers to analyze the work that needs to be done, then devise rules even an idiot can follow. Managers, divorced from the actual work, become bureaucrats, while their frustrated subordinates tighten the bolts...The new way-GE's way-breaks the intellectual framework that defines the limits of traditional management...Instead of seeking better ways to control workers, Welch says he aims to liberate them. As he explains, that goal is based on self-interest: The old organization was built on control, but the world has changed. The world is moving at such a pace that control has become a limitation. It slows you down. You've got to balance freedom with some control, but you've got to have more freedom than you ever dreamed of" (pp.19-20).

At this point, after outlining basic characteristics of old and new ways, Noel M.Tichy describes the difference between them in terms of sports:

1. Old Way-Machine Age: Hierarchical, control-focused, and bureaucratic. He notes, "The old GE resembled a football team: Each player had carefully prescribed roles, yielding a carefully orchestrated pattern. The coach called all the plays. Even the strategic-planning guidebook that governed GE policy were like the playbooks in football."

2. New Way-Information Age: Networks, flexibility, knowledge, and creation. He notes, "The New Way GE is like hockey; roles are blurred, play flows uncontrollably from one side of the rink to the other, there are no timeouts, players adjust to new situations almost every moment and think for themselves while looking out for the team as a whole."

In this context, throughout the book, Tichy and Sherman show GE's process of corporate transformation as three-act drama.

I highly recommend this business classic to all revolutionaries of the new century.

I've really enjoyed this series, but I felt this book in the series was by far the lamest.

The plot was very predictable and obvious. Though I didn't know exactly who the murderer was until the end, I felt that was more because I didn't try too hard to figure it out. Other aspects of the story were blatantly being set up for other purposes and I found myself trying to figure out what those were instead...and on those items, I was never wrong.

Still a very nice, easy summer read that only took me a few hours.

Anne Hardaway was looking forward to summer on the Jersey Shore. She has a lucrative contract as a ghostwriter for a radio psychologist and life was boring, but going well. Then the psychologist, Dr Arlene, shows up on her doorstep, claiming to want to work more closely with her on the book, and her good friend Delia's ward, Tracy, disappears. Well, the publisher is angry because nothing seems to be going on with the book, Dr Arlene is shopping all the time, NOT working, and Tracy seems to be a member of a witches' coven. One of the members of that coven is found dead on the beach, by Anne of course. Anne and the very attractive Detective Mark Trasker are determined to solve the mystery.

I have only read one of the books in this series. I really enjoyed it and always meant to read another. I am glad that I did. There is alot going on in this mystery. Dr. Arlene has other issues than the book and there is more to the coven than meets the eye. I didn't guess the murderer until the author wanted me to, and that's getting harder to do, the more mysteries that I read. I am definitely going to read more of this series.

It can be very frustrating to the reader to come into a series mid-way. This book, number 4 of a series called "A Jersey Shore Mystery" is so inviting and easy to read that I never found myself wondering what had happened in the earlier books. I enjoyed it so much, however, that I do intend to find out.

Set in Oceanside Heights, just a bit north of the famous Cape May, the ocean is an ever-present backdrop to the events that happen in Anne Hardaway's life. Anne is a 30-something ghostwriter, who inherited her small ocean-front home, and resides there with an elderly, one-eyed cat, Harry.

A lot seems to have happened in Anne's life since the first book (I've yet to read books two and three, but will remedy that lack very soon.) Thank goodness, there is a new policeman in charge--the handsome, enigmatic Mark Trasker. (This is a relationship to which I look forward with great anticipation., but you'll have to read the book to find out just exactly why.)

To find a grandmother caring for a grandchild or other young relative isn't exactly news any more, in today's world. Delia Graustark, the town librarian, has her teen-age niece Tracy, living with her; a typical cynical teen-ager who thinks no one in the world can understand her problems. When one of her friends is found dead, the aura of witchcraft quickly raises it's head, linking the two young women with others in town.

Anne is still supporting herself with her ghost-writing, and the current live pretend-author, Dr. Arlene, as she's known to her supposedly adoring public, is a self-help guru, particularly in the field of parenting. For reasons mostly known only to herself, Dr. A. descends on Annie for the duration--ostensibly to help with the book, but in reality, because Dr. A. has an entirely different agenda.

The two sets of stories are beautifully interwoven throughout the book. One set is Anne and Mark and the old-timers of the town who haven't forgotten Anne's mother, and aren't going to let Anne forget it either--and the other set is the loneliness and isolation of the teen-agers, set against the frantic Dr. A.

Wonderful. On every level, this is a terrific book. Highly recommended!

Against the backdrop of the antebellum world, here is a story of resiliance in the face of annihilation. With a deft, loving zeal Miriam Rawl reveals the sinuous soul of an unconquerable nobility that was the Old South. This is an unsentimental, but personal panarama of a people, a place, a woman and a man that will never bow down to the mere technical defeat bestowed upon the Confederacy by ignorant historians. Here the South lives again in the tough musculature of the human heart.

Union Major John Arledge was investigating the disappearance of a couple of his men that were last seen at the Heyward residence. Sparks flew immediately between Arledge and Ellen Heyward, who was struggling to simply survive and protect her sister, Pam. The sisters were forced to flee to Columbia and reside with a relative. However, they were hardly there before General Sherman's march on Columbia (Feb. 1865) happened.

*** Here is a tale that shows the author's deep research and knowledge on her topic! It is bold and authentic in historical detail and rich in colorful characters! Miriam Freeman Rawl shows the trials women like Ellen and Pam had to survive through during this hard time of America's past. It also reminds us that even among holocausts and its rubble aftermath, love can still be found. In my opinion, this author has succeeded in creating a story to win the hearts of readers everywhere. A MUST for people who enjoyed "Gone With The Wind"! ***

Miriam Freeman Rawl's From the Ashes of Ruin is the perfect book to tuck away on your summer vacation. Or for anytime that you want to immerse yourself with another time, another place. Ms. Rawl's engaging storyline and vivid writing style quickly absorbs the reader and brings to life Columbia, SC at the end of the War Between the States.

An all together good read in the best traditions of storytelling.

John Marszalek's biography of General Sherman really does its subject justice. Instead of merely recording the details of Sherman and his life, he finds something that obviously drove Sherman, the passion for order, and uses that to define his actions. This is not only limited to the Civil War, but to the Indian Wars, and his less famous years before the Civil War. Without praising or villifying, he is able to paint a remarkable portrait of the man whom Southerners hated as much as Northerners hated Jefferson Davis. This is the book to read on Sherman. Do not pass it up.

Marszalek has studied Sherman for years, and his biography reflects a comprehensive knowledge of the sources on Sherman. Sherman was a highly complex and intelligent person, fourth academically in his class at West point, though a prankish student who finished sixth in his overall graduating class because of demerits. If you don't know much about Sherman, if you only know he said war is hell and marched through Georgia, this is a good book for you. Sherman's army assignments before the Civil War were mostly in the South, and he loved it, but he hated secession, though he did not oppose slavery. Under Grant's wing he became an excellent general. He believed in a hard war but a soft peace, and opposed the conduct of reconstruction after the war. The only reservation I have is the author may overpsychologize his approach to Sherman: the passion for order theme runs throughout the book. But the book's quality is saved by the mountain of details the author relates about Sherman's life and other's views of him, and by a highly readable writing style. As one of the most important generals in the Civil War and in the history of the U.S. Army, and an important influence on modern concepts of total war, William Tecumseh Sherman (aka "Cump") is well deserving of study, and this biography is well worth reading.

Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order, by John F. Marszalek, is a model biography of possibly the greatest general to emerge from the Civil War. Marszalek gives a very even-handed account of the general's rise from relative obscurity to command the second largest army in America, becoming a hero to most, and the equivalent of Satan to some in the process. Unlike Longacre's biography of John Buford, Marszalek did not labor under a shortage of primary information about his subject. With such a luxury, Marszalek follows the development of Sherman the man, and shows how particular events shaped his future views on warfare and towards the South. Most notably, the author points out his experience in the Seminole War as the basis for Sherman's ideas on war against populations. He also describes Sherman's time spent in the South, and how his friendliness towards its people led to leniency towards them after the war concluded. It would appear that Marszalek was somewhat influenced by B.H. Liddell Hart's Strategy, when describing Sherman's military campaigns. Hart states that he believed Sherman was the best Civil War general because he promoted the "indirect" approach to warfare. On many occasions, Marszalek refers to Sherman's "psychological outflanking" of the enemy and winning military victories without fighting battles-the very essence of Hart's tract. At the same time, the author insists that Sherman was driven by his need to have order in a chaotic world. This is in fact the theme of the entire book, and Marszalek does an admirable job of showing that Sherman fought the war in the manner he did in order to provide order (Union) the quickest way possible. Marszalek stretches his analysis of Sherman's desire for order into his post-war life. Sherman's experiences fighting the Indians, as well as "dalliances" with other women, and conflicts with politicians at caused him great distress because they were disorderly. In the end, Sherman's desire for stability led him on a campaign to provide an accurate history of the Civil War. Though his efforts made him many enemies in the South, his contributions ensured his place in American history, and the order he so desperately desired.

Read The Complexity Advantage by Susanne Kelly and Mary Ann Allison it's a better book. Or better still check out the reviews before you buy.

I am a believer that organizational systems share much with biological systems. This idea struck me on the head the first time I visited the Galapagos. That trip made it clear that adaptation can occur very quickly and that more than one form of adaptation can occur in different directions at the same time, based on the environments that exist. I am also reminded of research that I recently read suggesting that we cannot accept or remember new ideas if we have not had previous experience with them. That is why it becomes so critical to prepare for change, to ask questions from many different perspectives to create ambiguity, and to present many different environments or alternate futures to create unpredictability. OPEN BOUNDARIES is a great book to read after THE LIVING COMPANY which describes how scenario planning was developed and why Shell was the only company prepared to do well during the Arab oil embargo. Complexity thinking really succeeds when you find a win-win solution - you will come out ahead no matter what happens. Another book you should look at that uses eight steps (revolving, not linear) to develop the best possible ideal practices for key activities assuming unpredictability of many things is THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION. With these three, you are well on your way to removing the stalls blocking OPEN BOUNDARIES to become THE LIVING COMPANY and to reach THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTIONS for future success

This book clarified views which I knew were correct, but lacked structure. Their view of business, as a biological system where innovation and progress occurs through the spontaneous interactions of individuals and groups, is a tremendous asset to anyone who values dynamic processes and thinking.

I have been doing calculus for a very long time and I am appalled by the ugly approach to mathematics by these two authors. Math is so beautiful because it is not phoney and the outcome is useful, exciting, tangible, palpable. But not here. The authors simply love wasting time and energy with useless stuff like proving limits that are instinctively so obvious. What next, prove that 1+1=2? You might get sick of math reading this book, but it's not maths fault, really.

This book has helped me come into a firm understanding of some heavy calculus, and I now do well in my calculus classes. Thank you to Newton, for coming up with this stuff (and hijacking Liebniz' notes), and to the two authors, who made calculus easy to understand and very powerful as a tool of the future.

I used this book for three semesters and found it to be nothing less than excellent. Thorough demonstrated examples and tons of practice exercises allows the student to develop a comprehensive foundation in calculus. This book is my math Bible. I find it so valuable, I have kept to this day and still reference it when needed. A must for any serious math student.

I retired five years ago after thirty years in a very large public library system, and recently found it necessary to return to the trenches for awhile, in a rather smaller system. In that half-decade, of course, the Internet changed drastically and, even though I'm constantly online and intimately familiar with the major search engines (and many of the minor ones), there was a large number of new reference information sources with which I was not at all familiar. So I went looking for professional tools to remedy my ignorance. This is the first book I've seen in the publisher's "CyberAge" series, and medthodologically, it's quite good. As others have noted, the static nature of print-on-paper means rapidly outdated material, but Sherman and Price show you how to attack the problem, so, even though I came across several (unfortunately) extinct databases, I was able to locate several new ones, too. This is a terrific instructional work for reference librarians, and the accompanying web site is near the top of my bookmarks at work.

Its always risky to buy a web guide, when by its own omission, half of the web sites will be dead in two years. My own use of the web addresses in the book, found a few dead, but the author's "invisible web" web site had updated links. As search engines get better the current "invisible webs" becomes more visible, and are probably replaced with a new class of invisible webs. My own recent search was able to find many of the "invisible sites" in this book, so perhaps this book is best at giving you ideas of how to search better, for example if your looking for books search for "Library of Congress". In the context of where this review is, Amazon is a great translucent source for info on books.

The book, The Invisible Web: Uncovering Information Sources Search Engines Can't See, can be divided into two parts.

The first part describes the strengths and weaknesses of search engines as tools for finding information on the World Wide Web and provides a good overview of the technical and business limitations that lead to the weaknesses. At the same time, the authors also provide a high-level explanation of how search engines operate and a comprehensive explanation of what types of resources are left out of search engine indexes. Although this section is a bit repetitive, it also stands as the best explanation I have encountered on the subject of Web resource accessibility (and inaccessibility) through the popular tools that searchers have at their disposal.

The second part provides a list of Invisible Web resources (resources that can not be indexed by search engines), organized by subject, with annotations. I personally did not find this list comprehensive, but it is a good place to start for those who have previously relied solely on search engines and directories for Web searching.

If you want to understand what resources are just beyond the grasp of search engines, and get a hand on them yourself, The Invisible Web is a great book to get you started.

The book The Destructive War by Charles Royster, examines the war policies and strategies of the Union and the Confederacy during the civil war. The book talks extensively about Confederate general Jackson and Union General Sherman.

At the beginning of the war the Union did not attack citizens or their property. The Union did not destroy any property of the citizens of the Confederacy because they anticipated winning the war. They realized that if they won the war it would be their responsibility to help the south rebuild. They also thought of the south and the people of the south as Americans despite labeling them traitors. But despite the reluctance on the part of Union Generals to damage citizen's property it eventually became policy. This change in policy came about because, "northern expressions of support for intensified war-making assumed that the Confederate army was an instrument of the Southern populace and that the populace was a legitimate object of attack," (Royster, 81). Women were also subject to attack. Union soldiers attacked women because "in the conventions of the time, women were supposed to use their power to ennoble and civilize-whereas, Southern women, it seemed, were serving what Elizabeth Cady Stanton called "mere pride of race and class." By promoting war against the union and by showing their hatred of Federal soldiers, they imitated Lady Macbeth and "unsexed themselves to prove their scorn of 'the Yankees'." Thus they forfeited their exemption as ladies and noncombatants," (Royster, 87). Confederates did not share this policy. They always were proud that when Lee invaded Pennsylvania in 1863 that he gave an order that soldiers were not to damage citizen's property or plunder it.

The book also talks about General William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman was a southerner who chose to stay in the Union. "He shared (southern) distaste for abolitionist and for Northern politicians who made hostility to slaveholders a political platform. Still, he told Louisianans that secession was treason and that he would not collaborate with it by remaining in the state," (Royster, 90). He hoped to stay out of the war but eventually he joined the Union army. He participated in the battle of Bull Run and blamed the "defeat on the inexperience and panic of the privates," (Royster, 92). He was the senior commander of central and western Kentucky in 1861, despite his desire not to be in charge. He was dismissed of command of the area and rumors spread that he was insane. He eventually led campaigns down the Mississippi River and captured Atlanta. He became famous for his destructive marches through the south.

General Thomas Jonathan Jackson or Stonewall Jackson was a very famous and effective Confederate General. Everyone even Northerners considered Jackson a "genuine general," (Royster, 42). Jackson on many occasions outmatched many Union Generals on the battlefield. He died on the battlefield on May 2, 1863 from friendly fire. Many Confederate Generals including Lee thought that if Jackson had not died that they would have won the war. After the war Jackson came to symbolize many things after the war. He epitomized the courageous and skilled Confederate soldier. He also represented a model "to all the men especially ambitious and aspiring youths, that the self-control and assiduous application he had become a self-made man," (Royster, 162).

The civil war was "an interior struggle in the (Confederacy and Union), an effort to make the newly forming conceptions of nationality inclusive lasting while they were still controversial and nebulous," (Royster, 145). Both sides believed that the best way to validate their idea of the nation is to destroy the other side's army. The Confederacy thought the best way to establish itself as an independent nation would be to deliver to the north a decisive defeat on their soil. General Stonewall Jackson gave the south many victories against the Union and came to be one of the most famous Generals in the war. The Union thought one of the best ways to bring the Confederacy to its knees would be to attack Confederate citizens. General Sherman was famous for his invasion into the south, wrecking havoc on the Confederate citizens.

I had to read this book for my Civil War class. I thought that the book was a valuable source of civil war information. However Royster repeated himself several times in the book. The book also jumped alot from subject to subject. The chapters did not flow into each other; they tended to skip from idea to idea. Despite this it was full of very detailed information.

This is a brilliantly labyrinthine disquisition on the American Civil War. Royster's premise is the examination of the wars' scale of destruction, and the surprising extent of its violence, developed out of biographical sketches of Sherman and Jackson, who Royster believes best personify the Union and the Confederacy. Further, Royster sees the devastation of the Civil War as incipient in the antebellum period. The Destructive War is interpretive as well as critical, literary as well as historical, dealing as much with the idea of war as the facts themselves. Indeed, the author terms his work " a long essay."

Royster depicts the Civil War as-primarily-aggresive, anomalous, vicarious, and as the title suggests, destructive. The Confederacy sought aggressive war to achieve quick legitimacy, its viability depending on the ability not only to wage war, but also to take that war north of the Potomac, make the Yankees feel its effects, and thereby convince them that the costs of prolonged combat would be far too dear. Royster argues that the Union pursued aggresive war, ultimately, to bring progress to the South and demonstrate the superiority of free labor over slave labor, by razing the Confederacy to its foundations and then rebuilding it in the North's own image.

For Royster no one better epitomizes the Confederacy than Thomas Jonathon Jackson, better known by his sobriquet Stonewall, which Royster asserts, reflected a self-created persona. Jackson's Stonewall was an inelegant fusion of plodding resolve, frustrated (if not checked) ambition, and intense piety, smacking of both Calvinism and Arminianism, all funneled into a zealous devotion to duty. His untimely death at Chancellorsville gave birth to the Stonewall myth-patriotic Christian warrior-providing tantalizing 'what if' grist for the counterfactual mill of post hoc Confederate nation building. An advocate of "the tactical offensive in battle" Jackson is certain the Civil War will be "earnest,massed, and lethal."

The essence of the Union, according to Royster, can be found in William Tecumseh Sherman. Alarmed by Confederate strength and resolve, Sherman presciently observed that tactical defensive warfare would be woefully insufficient in what he believed would be a long and costly war. Egged on by newspapers ravenous for victory on the cheap, and deferring to troops already engaged in wanton mayhem, Sherman embraced, then embodied, that which he originally resisted: total war.

Royster includes subsidiary characterizations of the war as drastic, Republican, and vigorous. Drastic war knows no limits in the pursuit of emancipation and abolition. Republican war means "Emergency war powers" and "passionate nationalism" which will create "a new republic, purged of antebellum evils and backwardness." Vigorous war is possible because of the "widespread eagerness to be exonerated of the criminality attached to bloodshed." Auxiliary adjectives such as harsh, bitter, ineluctable and causeless are employed to complete the illustration. In the book's chapter on vicarious war the author asks, "How had the naive notions prevalent at the start given way so readily to killing on a scale supposedly unimaginable?" This single question is the essence of Royster's work.

Royster's "The Destructive War" is one of the most important works of Civil War Scholarship in the 1990's. He blends a sweeping narrative with extensive analysis to explain the development of "total war" and its effects on Americans. What will really engage the reader is not so much Royster's examinations of General William Sherman's actions and those of his men, but rather the ideas of Stonewall Jackson and the calls for the destruction of Northern cities that they elicit from the Confederacy, a nation that was supposedly only wanted to fight a defensive war. While Royster's argument is not without some structural flaws, it makes some very interesting points about Confederate war aims and the willingness of populations and troops of both sides to destroy the cities of their former bretheren. I've read this book twice for graduate level classes and each time a lively discussion has been generated. An excellent book.

Now in an fully updated third edition, The Entrepreneur's Guide To Equity Compensation from the Foundation for Enterprise Development provides an excellent and highly recommended introduction to the hows, whys, and wherefores of employee ownership, as well as how empowered employees can help build a cutting-edge, proactive organization. Individual chapters address both individual-based and company-wide stock plans, savings plans that can hold employer stocks, crucial issues that can interfere with success, and much, much more. A recommended primer for any employer, for The Entrepreneur's Guide To Equity Compensation costs far less than what an unwise stock options decision would impose upon a corporate bottom line!

This excellent and clear explanation of approaches to equity plans, provides a guide to creating an employee ownership strategy. The book covers: stock grants; direct stock purchase programs; stock option plans; qualified employee stock purchase programs (ESPPs); employee stock ownership programs (ESOPs); 401(k) and other qualified retirement plans; nonqualified deferred compensation plans; stock appreciation rights and phantom plans; stock programs for American companies operating abroad; and the most suitable equity arrangement for various types of legal forms of companies. Explains the concept, pros and cons, and tax and cost implications. Viewing this work as a compensation consultant, I find it to be an outstanding reference, providing highly accessible explanations. Very highly recommended.

I have used the Entrepreneur's Guide for several years. It is an excellent tool - comprehensive yet easy to understand and logically organized. It presents a very complex area in a clear fashion that goes a long way to helping the interested person decide on a general approach to equity compensation that will fit their needs and help reach their goals for a very reasonable cost. I recommend it to anyone considering exploring an equity compensation strategy of any kind.