In absorbing all this info on TITANIC, I seem to have found one book that, as I read page after page, I'm become absorbed. Absorbed in the "feel" of the plight; as if I could feel the cold. As if I could feel the pain. My eyes mist as I am swept away with the yearning to know more. Thank you for the journey this book as brought me, and somehow, the experience that I was even a part of it! I seek to know more.

Although slightly dated Managing Change has become a classic of the genre and a favourite of business schools. For good reason. The book comprises some of the most useful academic articles on change management published in academic journals in the 1980s and early 1990s as well as case studies. The latter are well selected and will help to generate furious debate in any group that studies them. Jick's own contributions provide balanced and thoughtful links between the pieces as well as several articles on issues like the role of vision statements and implementing change.

Any one interested in change management will need this book. Although there are no 'formulas' for the right way to introduce change programs, a thoughtful reading of the material in this book can only improve one's ability to implement change and to understand how others react to it.

Why four stars rather than five? The price of the book is unbelievable and (I suspect) hard to justify given the large numbers which would have sold in business schools. It's sad that no paperback edition is available for students either. I understand an updated edition is being prepared.

Professor Todd Jick, one of the great people in a respected field of time management, produces a great source of needed information. It talks about honchos of GM, Motorola among others, and helps you also with sales and brunches and things that can really improve your life in drastic ways. Professor Jick should definetley writew a second, because this one has really helpedme grow in many ways. He has helped many because of this book. Read it!

Professor Todd developed the book for his students at Harvard, using the case study approach. And ,of course, it is an excellent text to be used in the class room. But the beauty is that it is an extremely readable book, not heavy, not your typical book by a professor.

It conveys the concepts in a series of simple and elegant reading materials and cases. And it feels great to read case-studies about the inside workings of many corparate titans like Bob Galvin (Motorola), John Reed (CITIGROUP), Jack Welch (GE) and many more.

The book is great, but more so for people who do not come from the behavioural sciences or organization development background, but just plane business background. It zeroes in on and enunciates the key concepts of leading and managing change. It walks you through a series of cases illustrating not only what to do , but what not to do. And the cases have a tremendous variety to them ranging from merger situations to executives being brought in from the outside to internal organizational programs.

If you have time for not even one book on change management, this is it.

Almost every literate American is acquainted with the basics of the coming of the War Between the States in the form of Lincoln's election and the firing on Ft. Sumter. Most Civil War students are also acquainted with the military sequence of events of the siege and surrender, followed by Lincoln's call for volunteers to invade the Confederacy and the resulting general hostilities. As far as I know, however, very few lay students of the War have much appreciation for the wide variety of political views on relations between the states at the time, on the possible approaches to the slavery situation (including proposals to guarantee protection for the institution made by some surprising individuals), on the subtle constitutional and other legal aspects of secession, and the actual process by which South Carolina's secession spread to ten other states, some of which were quite reluctant to do so initially. Prof. Klein sets all of this out in a very readable, fast moving text which is guaranteed to hold the reader's interest and attention. From my standpoint, the most interesting aspects involved the (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts by some of the most unlikely individuals to pull the situation back from the brink, and the cynicism of others who are often described in more altruistic and one dimensional terms. At many junctures in Klein's book the reader will get the irresistable urge to play "what if." I "read" this book by a rented audio tape edition during some day long vacation drives and I was extremely pleased with it, in a way that is often not true with well researched histories. The other reviewers who have described this as comparable to a mystery or other novel are not far off the mark and I recommend it very highly.

"Days of Defiance" deserves to rank with "Battle Cry of Freedom," the Pulitzer-winner of a few years back, in its drama, pacing and sense of context. It is among the rare Civil War books that do not wallow in detail, that amplify the poignance of flawed people making decisions the reader knows to be tragic, and that kindle the sense that the story is about America, not about which general charged into which thicket with which regiment. The author picks a tightly circumscribed period in which to tell his story: roughly the five months before the bombardment of Fort Sumter (although he synopsizes the previous half-century to give essential background). The highest praise I can think of for this book is to say that he makes those five months, yes, suspenseful. Follow this book's enigmatic Lincoln into another brilliant Civil War book, "Lincoln at Gettysburg," and you have a window into a period truly lit by fire.

Klein does a superb job making the reader feel as he or she is living in 1859/60 -- not knowing that a murderous sectional war is on the way, suspecting same, and lamenting the situation while hoping that various peace efforts, downplayed by revisionist historians, would succeed. Klein is an excellent writer, in contrast to many Civil War book writers -- good at choosing words, sentence structure, chapter design, thesis statements, etc. So you never feel "lost" in the book. I would place this book in the top 10 or so about the period.

I have seen the tour of TITANIC twice before, and this book just livens the show even more. I totally reccomend it to any fan of the show. Or even anyone who is interested in it! It tells you everything that you could ever need to know about this glorious tribute to the stage. May the show sale on forever.

I am only 14 and I have seen many Broadway Musicals. This one is definatly up there with my top ten. The power of how all of the different people acted and learned on the great ship is greatly shown in this book. The musical really highlights on the fact that all of the classes looked at the world with different eyes. I have just purchased the soundtrack from amazon and hoping to purchase this too! It is a great story to be passed on.

I WAS at the closing of theshow and saw it 3 times before and it was terriffic this is a great memory for any fan of the show

Patrick Mauries' "Cabinets of Curiosities" is a study of rooms of wonder. Built during the Baroque Age in Europe, these rooms--sometimes large chambers and in other cases simply elaborate cabinets--held the natural and mechanical treasures that wealthy collectors assembled, often in an attempt to structure for themselves an entire universe. Consistent with the sumptuous nature of these collections and the complex manner in which they were displayed, "Cabinets of Curiosities" is distinguished above all by its color photography, its complex design scheme, and a use of cropping and perspective that give the reader a sense of personally entering the collection spaces shown.

Because of its size, focus on photography, and price, "Cabinets of Curiosities" could easily be dismissed as a coffee-table book for the few. However, its appeal should be broader. The instinct to collect and to categorize-- even if it involves only seashells found on the beach, leaves fallen in a forest, or unusual stones found around the home-- is universal. Transcending time and space, collecting and categorizing are fundamental in particular to the sense of wonder and process of learning that define childhood.

"Cabinets of Curiosities" can help us to see anew and celebrate anew the complexities and fascination of the animate and inanimate worlds about us. In these circumstances, it is particularly disappointing that the text is so lightweight in comparison to the photographs and that the confusing movement among typefaces makes it difficult to track the text. Mauries is to be congratulated for his bold thinking in fashioning this book and making it so beautiful. If he had devoted an equal amount of effort to researching, explaining, and documenting his subject matter, "Cabinets of Curiosities" would have risen to the ranks of a publishing classic.

It is a chaotic world out there. It would be nice to bring that chaotic world in to a room, or even into a cabinet, and sort it all out, top to bottom. There have been those who have tried this, collectors who aspired to gathering parts of the world that would sum it all up, and place them together so that those parts could reflect upon each other. This quixotic aim is beautifully depicted in a big illustrated book, _Cabinets of Curiosities_ (Thames & Hudson) by Patrick Mauriès. You can look at the lavish illustrations here, and gain a bit of understanding of the obsessions of the collector, and you might look around your own relatively meager curios, and recognize some envy.

Mauriès speculates that the precursors of such cabinets were the relic collections in medieval churches. Such collections might have started with supposed pieces of saints or of the True Cross, but eventually included bizarre tangents like a vial of milk from the breast of the Virgin, or the rod used by Moses. The magical air of such a collection, but these cabinets were secular, built not by monks, but by kings and other wealthy men. As collectors perfected their assemblies, they sought out rarities, and this tended to make the collections full of idiosyncratic freaks. These sorts of marvels were to fill the viewer with wonder, but tastes in such things change. As the eighteenth century approached, wonder itself was regarded as a "low, bumptious form of pleasure," a credulousness which was out of place with scientific enquiry. Mauriès demonstrates that even though the collectors tried to emphasize relationships between the items in the cabinets, the surrealists were equally good at assembling items whose conjunctions would be without meaning. There is a picture of the surrealists' exhibition in Paris in 1936, and although the cabinet is metal and glass, it contains found objects, bones, and mathematical sculptures that any curiosity collector would have valued.

Mauriès's tour of strange collections of strange objects is great fun. His chapters about the history and fate of such collections, and the personalities that engaged in them, reflect a deeply intellectual appreciation. But _Cabinets of Curiosities_ is a picture book. There are reproductions of old prints showing how the collections used to look, as well as photographs of cabinets which still remain, and the strange objects of desire that filled them. It makes a good-looking volume. Pictures here include the cherry pit carved with thirty miniscule heads; ivory worked into seemingly impossible spirals, linked rings, and spheres within spheres; a jeweled cup with dragons horns (which are actually warthog tusks); portraits of "cat people" abnormally covered with hair; mechanical insects; and much more. Beautifully laid out, these pages are curious, indeed.

I recommend this as a must have for anyone interested in couture. It is a very detailed and revealing book on the working methods of Christian Lacroix. No other book follows the mind of a famous designer as he creates a collection the way this book does. It draws on Christian's very own notes and scrapbook. Great content, great visuals, great book!

each page is worth becoming a central piece of decoration in you bedroom or your entrance hall. Hand-written notes, collages, intimate comments. Everything in this book talks to the heart. You will love this masterpiece. More than a book!

Fantastic! Christian gives a guided tour of his own work process, and personal advice as a professional designer. It's like reading his diary, or suddenly finding yourself as his closest confidant and assistant designer! He shares his own impressions of himself and his work. He shares details of how his personal life and his career developed - even from childhood- what inspires him, and what are his influences. Four stars because it's not a quick reference: dates, sources, locations not readily found.

Christian Lacroix brings coulours and light in each page of this book. In fact, this is more than a book; it is a personal gift made by Christian Lacroix to Françoise, his life, to his friends from Arles (where he was born) and to each invividual reader. Many hand-written comments, pink and yellow pages, naive inspiring rural objects. This is a perfect gift for somebody who already owns everything. Fresh, elegant, fashionable.

I was raised in a Pullman train car on the ground next to the Southern Pacific railroad in Southern Oregon so I saw many hobos, bums, and tramps over the years. I spoke with them from time-to-time and "Steam Train" Maury Graham's book was right on. My dad ,who worked for the railroad, was also against giving anything to the people who would knock on the door for fear that it would encourage others. But during the day if one came to the door my mom would fix them one or two cheese sandwiches. I still recall how she said one time she watched him as he walked back to the train and finished the sandwiches as he walked so he wouldn't have to share with the others in the train. The railroad yard in my community was too small for a "Bull" so when they were spotted by the railroad workers they just told them to stay out of sight and catch the next train on-ward. This book is filled with information about a culture that has nearly disappeared. It's told in an entertaining and easy to read form. It just shows you the vast difference between the hobos of the past and the bums with signing saying that they are "Vietnam Vets looking for work" who populate many interchange corners in Texas and work the same locations for year-after-year. "Tales of the Iron Road" shares with you some of the most famous hobos of the past, poems, tricks of the "trade", recipes, and more. If you're interested in this side of railroading you'll enjoy it immensely.

I first read Tales of the iron road 10yrs ago.It was a wonderful and exciting piece of reading for me.The book informed me of my Fathers history and heritage that I had not known. It also gave me bits of family history on my fathers side that I wasnt aware of. Many years have seperated my father Steam Train Maury graham and I,but reading this book has somehow connected me to a man that Ihad heard little of as I was groing up. I will cherish it forever and never stop believing or caring for the man whom I thought was as a child my hero. Sincerely, Maurice Andrew Graham

The Yeston/Kopit version is nothing special compared to the Lloyd-Webber version. Don't get this book.

In no way does the Lloyd Webber version match up to this one! Maury Yeston has composed a beautiful score, and the book give so much info it's unreal! If you want this book (since Amazon.com says it's out of print), go to www.samuelfrench.com They publish the libretto. It's worth buying!

I have seen the Lloyd Webber version two times and the Yeston version four. There is no way that the Lloyd Webber version can match up to the Yeston version. In this book you learn more about the character of Erik, he has a sense of humor, an aching heart, and a love for Christine. You learn how he met Christine, who his parents are and why he loves Christine. The Lloyd Webber version is spectacular and I will always love it, but it is very vaugue, and for those who wish to know Erik (the Phantom) this is a very good book to read.

Klein's retelling of the story of the stock market crash of 1929 is just too little and much too late. Other books, notably Only Yesterday by F.L. Allen for anecdotal material and The Great Crash of 1929 by J. K. Galbraith for analysis, go over the same material and do a better job. Klein's book does have some strong points: wonderful vignettes of some of the people, big and small, who were caught up in the crash; a good analysis of why Herbert Hoover, "the great engineer," couldn't engineer his way out of this one; some interesting anecdotal material I haven't seen anywher else. But all of that could have been done in less than half the space. Nice try, but no cigar.

Maury Klein, in his book Rainbow's End: The crash of 1929, has given us a blend of a newer style of historiography with the traditional sense of examining historical events. He has given us a look at the Stock Market Crash of 1929 through the eyes of the people that participated, rather than looking at it strictly from an economic or political historical viewpoint.

Klein starts his book with a description of American society in the 1920's and explains to us why the society of excess and speculation led to the crash moreso than a failing of the general American economy. By dotting the landscape with characters, some familiar and some unfamiliar, Klein gives us a good portrayal of the times.

There is, unfortunately, only a short section of the book that actually deals with the events of the crash itself. This section focuses the days between Black Thursday and Bloody Tuesday, which culminated in a horrific period of losses in the market.

Klein does a good job of staying on task during the sections of the book in explaining the economic factors and the behind-the-scenes actions that took place during these few hectic days. He does not, however, explain the immediate social ramifications (such as the fact that people who lost everything gave up on life) as well as might be expected; he gives this facet of the crash only peripheral coverage.

I would recommend this book to anyone that is looking for a socio-economic history of America during this 1920's. It does a very good job of covering this topic. However, if one is looking for details just on the crash itself and those few terrible days on Wall Street, that reader would be well served to find another book to read.

"No era ever vanished so suddenly, so completely, as the
twenties." -- -- David Dempsey, _New York Times_, Feb 15, 1970

This is a quick run-through of the Crash, with a little pop-sociology about America in the Twenties. It's eerie, reading quotes from bankers, politicians, and brokers from the months before the Crash, about how the market had become so modernized and shockproof that panics were now impossible. Sounds familiar...

New York Times financial columnist Alexander Noyes is a primary source in this book. It is fascinating, watching these titanic events being filtered daily through this not-stupid man's pen. We've heard more than 70 years of second-guessing about the Crash by now, so it is interesting seeing how it was taken point-blank by analysts at the time.

In Maury Klein's account, the Crash is nobody's fault. Like Stanislaw Lec once said, every snowflake in an avanlanche pleads not guilty. Big brokers ostentatiously placed big orders, hoping to spur rallies. Consortia of financiers struggled to maintain public confidence in the market. President Herbert Hoover-who as a humanitarian first and failed President second was Jimmy Carter in reverse-tried to get Big Business together in a game plan to retrieve the situation. But in a free market, there is no one pulling levers and hauling cables controlling things. There was no one to stop the free market from going into freefall.

Throughout the book are amusing little vignettes, like the man who sat smiling in his broker's office throughout Black Monday. His termagant wife wouldn't be able to nag him about the neighbors doing better in the market than him anymore...