Harlem stride piano is one of the most joyous of all jazz styles, and there has long been a need for a good book on the subject.

The book offers a number of historical and contextualising chapters before a series of profiles of the major players. It is the profiles that are the real problem. Firstly, Earl Hines, great as he was, was not a stride player. Second, the profiles offer very little new information or analysis. Many of them are largely given over to identifying out-of-print LPs by the artists concerned, information that would be better presented in a table. Some of the profiles make use of interesting original interview material, and some, such as the profiles of Luckey Roberts and the great Donald Lambert, usefully add to the body of knowledge about the player. Others are little more than digests of well known information.

Th book contains a number of transcriptions, including solos or choruses by James P. Johnson, Donald Lambert, Hank Duncan and Fats Waller.

This book is rather a missed opportunity. It is well worth reading for those interested in the area, but it is by no means a serious academic study of the stride style and its practitioners.This book is a useful addition to the literature, but we still await a definitive work.

When I picked up this book, I didn't even kow who Sumner Welles was (don't ask how I ended up reading this one). I found that this book provided an excellent description of Welles contribution to foreign policy in the US during the Rooselvelt administration. All of Welles' official accomplishments were clearly described and outlined. Where I found difficulty with this book was when it went into detail about Welles' personal life. It was clear that the author (Welles' son) was trying to be very objective about his father's life. However the book fluctuates between being very objective about Welles -- mostly on the more controversial aspects -- and revealing too much detail about small seemingly inconsequential events about which the author seems to have included simply because he was there. This book also has a tendency to apply villain or saint status to everyone but Welles. Roosevelt could do no wrong, and Hull, Bullitt, and van Hamme were all selfish evil men who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted. I doubt that in reality, things were that black and white. However, coming in knowing very little about these people, I was very interested in learning about the influence Welles had in World affairs during WWII and the discord that seems to have existed in the US government during this time.

This is one of the few (maybe the only) book that deals specifically with the management of R&D consortia. The consortia studied in this book are American consortia which comprise a large number of members and whose duration is not limited. So its findings do not really apply to the short-term consortia that are nowadays used for achieving one particular goal. The book establishes a typology of R&D consortia and tries to explain their role in a theory of collective action. The chapters deal with vision, mission and leadership, R&D planning, Consortium Strategy, Consortia in Europe and Japan, and the future of R&D consortia. While the book is not particularly helpful for day-to-day consortium management, it offers some interesting conceptual ideas, but no groundbreaking insights.

Wait for it to come out on video!

This is a decent starting point for someone who wants to learn ArcInfo. However, it should only be used in consultation with a professional. There are many many details left out of the book. There are many many pitfalls to learning ArcInfo that are not included. Use this book, but don't expect to learn ArcInfo from it; truly learning ArcInfo is a process that takes a few years at the least.

I read this book as a part of a class. In this class we discussed Washington's work as written from the 'trickster' perspective. In this light it was quite interesting to see how he points out hypocrasies indirectly, while apparently stating the opposite. Thus, creating a self-aware hypocrasy within the text itself. I'm not sure that I am yet convinced, however. The work often seems a little bit on the acquiescent side to me.

As an Industrial Engineer I already knew many if not all of the ideas behind the "Six Sigma Strategy". These gentleman have found a way to package the IE focus into a neat little package. UNfortunatly it lacks depth. The book was a good read as an intro to the Black Belt training I had, but it does not offer any substance for those of you looking to apply any of the concepts. This book only talks on a high level about them. It acts as more of a sales pitch at best for the ideas behind six sigma. It is probably worth it but the if you are looking at trying to improve your business processes and look for solutions you would be better off hiring an Industrial Engineering Consultant. If you were to ask my opinion of a better book to read I would STRINGLY recommmend "The Goal" or "Critical Chain" both by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. His books offer a more realistic approach at solving these issues. As info Six Sigma has been a failure in our company many of which is blamed by the fact that the program requires a total commitment by upper(many companies don't have the Jack Welch type leadership)

This is by far the best book that I have read on cost reduction management in business processes.

The authors have been involved with Six Sigma methods since the initiative originally began at Motorola. In their role as trainers for those who apply Six Sigma methods, they have a bird's eye view of the implementation issues of the last few years.

The book has a nice balance among explaining the concept, how to apply the concept, case examples of application, and comparisons to other ways of thinking about providing products and services. I found that perspective was unusually broad, but pretty specific for a business book.

Three kinds of people will be disappointed in this book: (1) Those who already apply another quality improvement method and are pleased with the results they are getting. (2) People who have only a casual interest in cost reduction (3) People who would like to know the details of how to apply the analytical methods involved. If you fall into one of those camps, you should probably skim the book or skip it.

On the other hand, if you are interested in improving your operations, profitability, performance and effectiveness, you should definitely read this book. It will give you a realistic sense of what the potential is for your enterprise to benefit from the Six Sigma process. If that potential interests you, it will also give you a variety of ways to investigate the opportunity. You can't ask for much more from one book.

Separately, I should mention that some of the case studies cited here are ones that our firm has separately investigated for other purposes. In each case, the reports are identical to what we learned. The authors seem to have been scrupulously careful to get the details right -- something that seems very appropriate for people explaining Six Sigma (3.4 errors per million opportunities).

Although I like this book very much, the Six Sigma concept does have some limitations. It may help you to be aware of some of them before reading this book. First, Six Sigma is usually focused on your own operations and those of your suppliers rather than the ecosystem that supports you. This limited focus causes some opportunities to be missed. Second, there may be trade-offs between time to market and Six Sigma in short-lived products that require separate consideration. Third, many people will make mistakes in how they measure performance for the customer and end user using this concept. The author warn against this, but the concept unfortunately lends itself to being weak in this area. Fourth, the concept tends to leave an organization too complacent after achieving Six Sigma. At such moments, there are probably still important areas where approach perfection will be incredibly valuable. But your organization may stop looking for them. The theory suggests limited benefits from pressing further at this point. The theory will turn out to be wrong in some critical applications, especially where life and death are involved.

A good book to read at the same time is Lean Thinking which will give you another interesting perspective on ways to reduce defects and create more value at the same time.

Finally, a management book written by two authors who have actually been there and done it! After nearly two decades of defining and refining the Six Sigma strategy and helping change the course of companies like GE and AlliedSignal, Mikel Harry and Richard Schroeder have complied that experience into a viable book. One of their most noteworthy point is that quality for quality sake's doesn't guarantee market share and profitability. Through the application of Six Sigma, companies focus on increasing profitability and shareholder value before they focus on improving quality. The results include increased market share, lower costs, and growing profit margins. As these authors aptly show in this concise and in-depth guide to applying Six Sigma, companies that learn to statistically measure and improve their processes are also companies able to deliver the highest-quality products, on time, at the lowest possible cost. This book took me past all the media attention surrounding Six Sigma and explained step-by-step how the Breakthrough Strategy can be applied to not just my company at the executive level, but to specific operations throughout the company.

The cover blurb says "Anthropologist Stefan Helmreich's look at the social and simulated worlds of Artificial Life" and it turns out to be horribly true. I hoped to learn how the programmers viewed their simulated worlds, and how that relates to their culture. Instead I found how Stefan looks at the programmers, and what he thinks of science. The background description of individuals and institutions isn't bad. The rest is.

Camille Paglia is not usually classified as an anthropologist, but this book reminded me of her - if she couldn't write well and ignored the culture she wrote about. This book has little bearing on its purported subject, and the author's personal views of science aren't interesting (largely because he's speaking on a subject he clearly doesn't understand). If you want Camille Paglia, read Camille Paglia. If you want an actual anthroplogical study of science or A-life, don't waste your time here.

The best I can say about this book is that it is the most outstanding example of academic pretentiousness I've ever encountered. The author's acknowledgments alone cover six pages and include over 185 names.
My own background includes a college education (philosophy and mathematics) and ten years as a college instructor in computer science. I'm quite used to reading and comprehending technically sophisticated literature, often poorly written. I can even claim to have understood much of Microsoft's documentation for their developer products. Nevertheless, I found Mr. Helmreich's prose quite inpenetrable. If his goal was to explain the people and culture behind the new field of Artificial Life to a lay audience, he has failed miserably.
To be fair, I must admit that I put the book down after struggling through the first thirty pages of the main text. The book's cover states that Mr. Helmreich is a professor at NYU. If the prose in his book is any indication of the lucidity of his lectures to his students, they have my deepest sympathy.

Stefan Helmreich presents an entertaining glimpse into the culture, the lives, and the musings of many of the leading voices in the field of artificial life. One of the real strengths of this book is his ability to offer a perspective from 'inside' the discipline--a view not only of the history and present status and future direction of the field of artificial life, but of the scientists and researchers responsible. That, plus his personal fascination with the subject matter and his obvious writing skills, strike you within the first few pages. This was at times a literate and enjoyable read.

Unfortunately, it was also frustrating and, ultimately, disappointing. Frustrating because it is patently obvious that the author approached his subject matter with his ethnographic conclusions firmly in place prior to ever examining the evidence. There is no other way one can explain the lengths he goes to convince the reader that white, heterosexual, male-dominated mythologies lurk under every bush he came across in Santa Fe. As such, truly interesting questions he raises--such as the religious aspect of silicon-based creation--are either left unread by the reader long since turned off by his biased approach, or else unfairly dismissed as equally prejudiced.

And disappointing, because in the long run most of his efforts are either irrelevant, or trivial. Computational studies in evolution are at bottom a matter of binary code. Zero's and one's. They are neither black nor white, Baptist or Buddhist, straight or gay, male or female. Now, clearly the researcher at their computer may indeed be any of the above--but that does not change the code itself. So in this sense Helmreich's observations are irrelevant. On the other hand, no one would argue the fact that personal bias may well contaminate interpretations of computational results. Personal bias may well contaminate almost everything we say and do, to one degree or another. But that is a rather trivial observation to make--one that has everything to do with human beings, and next to nothing to do with the science of computational evolution, which is what I had assumed from the title "Silicon Second Nature" that this book was about.

What can I say...the title says it all!!! I can not believe how horrible this CD is. It is a good idea that goes terribly wrong. The person on this CD appears to have absolutely no concept of wing chun kung fu. Save your money!!!! The only thing I regret is that I can't give it a LOWER rating.

Please...Please...Please...Don't waste your money. This CD-Rom has nothing to do with wing chun. Terrible.

I've studied Wing Chun for years, and do agree that this CD strays in some places from the traditional approach. However, I also caution that many Wing Chun practitioners are so tradition / lineage oriented that they miss some really great approaches to the style out of shear ignorance. They think if it is different than they do it, it must be wrong. Well, not necessarily so. As far as this CD goes, it may not be the best instructional tool for a beginner, but I think it should accompany anyone's collection simply because the applications presented for the moves of the Sil Lum Tao form are VERY ADVANCED! You don't often see such advanced applications even in advanced Wing Chun classes, because most people don't know a lot of the ones shown here. Anyway, enough said. I'd buy it if you study or want to study wing Chun.

Could you correct my submitted review. I incorrectly called Dr. Thomas R. W. Longstaff, "Dr. Longfellow". I'd like him to still talk to me. Thanks!

Beyond the Q Impasse is a collaborative effort that is very detailed and somewhat dry. This work was done by a group committed to one theory, the Two Gospel Hypothesis (2GH) - which I feel is correct in part anyway -, and so set out with that assumption in mind. As an exercise, it is probably necessary that a serious exploration of the idea that Luke used Canonical Matthew as it's primary source without knowledge of Mark, or more importantly the hypothetical Q document.

This book is an exhaustive analysis of how Luke could have been written to fit the 2GH assumption. It lacks a good introduction to the approach, and lacks examination of alternatives. As a result it is dry, and difficult reading not of much use to anyone other than a researcher into the subject. Of course I think that was the objective, simply to supply some material supporting Luke's use of Matthew. But overall it fails because of a lack of exploration, and instead becomes an uncritical narrative typical of group think. (ouch, this is from a strong supporter of Dr. Farmer and Dr. Longfellow here!)

About the Book's theory :

The presumption of 2GH, based upon the now Canonical Gospels of Matthew and Luke, made this exercise dubious. This created a need to have Luke open five scrolls of Matthew at once to create his Gospel, while theoretically possible, seems utterly ludicrous. The complexity of this approach, done without error, defies reasonable human work. A messy work like Acts seems more likely with all its' illogic and redundancy. What's more the movement of material into the Central section, such as the Lawyers' question (Luke 10:25-28), Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit (Luke 12:10), and the parable of the mustard seed (Luke 13:18-19), creates a resulting level of complexity for the author of Mark to conflate his account from Luke and Matthew which this book supports. Somehow Mark manages to extract material sequentially common with Matthew from the Central section of Luke, such as above, without showing any hint of the other content in that section. Another problem is shown in material, such as the Lord's Prayer (Luke 11:1-4), that form and redactional criticism argue found its' way into Matthew from Luke (Matthew 6:9-13; note perhaps also Mark 11:25 was the textual basis for Matthew 6:14-15), breaking up his Blessings and Woes (Matthew 6:1-8, 16-21). Further no account is taken for the missing elements in what is likely an earlier form of that book, which the Marcionites called the "Gospel of the Lord." Simply put there are too many holes in this approach and the theory itself requires a too complex writing system by Luke.

What this book did show though, was that Q is not necessary for a solution to the Synoptic problem. Yet what I see emerging is a more complex history involved in the composition of the Synoptic Gospels than any of the three top theories (the 2SH or "Q", Farrar or "FH" and the 2GH) presents. I think the 2GH will hold, but not derived from the Canonical Luke or Matthew, rather from earlier prototype versions of these books, which were largely lacking all the missing material that cannot be found in Mark. That will be a Luke with no Central Section, and a Matthew lacking most of the common material with Luke. This exercise would look completely different if the Luke which Mark used lacked everything before 4:31 (some evidence exists that verses 4:16,22-24 may have existed in a different location paralleling Mark 6:1-6), Central section material 11:14-28, 12:10 and 8:19-21 in place of 6:20-8:3, with Luke 13:18-19 in place of Luke 8:19, no Central section from 9:51-18:14, Luke 10:25-28 placed before Luke 20:39-40 where it belongs, as well as the Marcionite version of the Ointment story (Luke 7:36-50 but much shorter) after Luke 22:2 where it belongs as well, and finally nothing after 24:11. Note, obvious later additions such as Jesus promising Simon Peter to the Devil in 22:31-33 also would not have been in this Luke. If you likewise follow Harold Riley's proposed proto-Matthew outline you have a better starting point.

In the end if this exercise were repeated on simpler basis, allowing the current compositions have been rearranged, and built up in a series of redactions, you can dispense with the cumbersome five scroll approach for Luke, as well as most of the need for Q. You can then actually apply sequential, redactional, form, and textual criticism to arrive at probable paths for many verses transmission from redaction to redaction. What this book proves is that a simpler model to explain step-wise the redactions is needed rather than a sweeping general theory such as the 2SH, 2GH ad FH give us. Only then can the Q impasse be truly broken.

I am sorry, but the above review is quite barmy and has no place on a site such as this. Why on earth can't people review the books they are meant to without engaging in such obvious madness ? Jesus lived to 90 ? Shame no one in the ancient world thought to tell us so. Pity the reality (the ignoble execution of a Jewish peasant healer - thought by his followers to be the Messiah - is such a boring, conventional story for all the mad people out there). This book is a work of serious scholarship and ought to be treated as such. It has important implications for anyone engaged in the study of the gospels and Christian origins and is quite refreshing in its critique of common assumptions about the relationships between the primary texts.