Written over 30 years ago, "Run Computer Run" takes a look at the way educational technology is actually adopted into the classroom, and highlights the critical features an educational device (such as the then-current plans for computers) must meet, beyond the novelty/glamor factor that may get it in the door: 1. cost/value 2. flexibility 3. generality 4. scheduling/parallelism 5. physical accessibility 6. reliability 7. complexity/comfort 8. standardization/integration 9. (last but most important) content This often-cited book is probably not as often read. The final conclusion of the book continues to be highly relevant - the root cause of the lack of progress in educational reform is ingrained in the bureaucratic structure of the schools. Oettinger was not the first to advocate competition in education, but his argument for it is very forceful and convincing.

When I read "Running a perfect BBS" by Mark Chambers, I had just started to run my own BBS. I found it to be -extremely- informative and intuitive. It is a book by SysOps for SysOps. Mark Chambers and the co-authors did a wonderful job describing BBS packages. high-lighting the function and benefits of each. Mr. Chambers provided a very insightful look at legal and troubleshooting issues, describing possible legal problems and hardware fixes. Mark does not center on one particular BBS engine over the others, (just a little bit of Wildcat! BBS) and provides a very unbiased view, which is a nice break from David Wolfe's "The BBS Construction Kit & Expanding your BBS". (I am not bashing those two books! they are very good.) Running a Perfect BBS includes descriptions of how to operate BBS doors and external mail programs, as well as Internet connectivity and Satellite interfacing. I still find this book useful for reference and would recommend it to anyone who shows an interest in starting their own BBS. Despite it's age, "Running a Perfect BBS" is still valid, for BBS software hasn't radically within the last couple of years. Pick it up! you will not be dissapointed. (It comes with a disk that has Wildcat BBS, and other utilties)

It's hard to go wrong when you write a book about old-time baseball, and the Pacific Coast League might have been the best of the best.

Paul Zingg's and Mark Medeiros's book is in much the same vein as the equally classic Dick Dobbins books on this subject. However, "Runs, Hits and an Era" is a little more fortified with statistics. The names of Jigger Statz and Buzz Arlett are hardly household words today, but they truly must have been the Henry Aaron and Barry Bonds of their league and era.

And the authors rely less on interviews with the participants and more on traditional written sources - newspaper articles and other books written on the subject. In this book, there is perhaps slightly more emphasis on the Pacific Coast League's relationship to the other professional baseball leagues, major and minor, and on its relationship to the world at large.

This book has the usual collection of wonderful baseball photos from that era but also some photographs from the historical period in general. On page 3, there's a photograph from 1869 of the meeting of the rails of the Transcontinental Railroad that joined the eastern and western parts of the country. This enabled professional eastern teams to compete on the West Coast. The barnstorming tour of the first Cincinnati Reds baseball team took them to the West Coast, and while they bowled over the local teams with the same regularity that they bowled over everyone else during their incredible 130 game win streak, their visit did help set into motion the forces that would promote professional baseball on the West Coast.

Zingg and Medeiros also provide more information on the "color line", which was practiced by the PCL as unjustly and almost as rigidly as that practiced by the majors. Its existence was also just as predictably doomed, as the influx of "colored" talent would prove to be too overwhelming to be denied. Names such as Luke Easter, Minnie Minoso, and Artie Wilson might be familiar to many, but I was surprised to see the name of Piper Davis alongside these others.

A mainstay of the old Negro Leagues that played in the shadows of the white major league teams in the east, Piper Davis is largely known for having first signed Willie Mays to a Birmingham Black Baron contract in the 1940's. I had not known that he made his way to the Pacific Coast afterwards and established himself as a PCL pioneer.

Who hit the longest home run in the history of professional baseball in the San Francisco Bay Area? The first five names that likely came to your mind were Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Reggie Jackson and Willie McCovey. The name Roy Carlyle of the Oakland Oaks probably wouldn't have ranked high on your list, but with the immortal Buzz Arlett waiting his turn on-deck, Carlyle's 618-foot Fourth of July blast in 1929 off of the San Francisco Missions' Ernie Nevers (yes, the old football star) probably traveled farther than any "splash down". Carlyle looks like an ordinary-sized chap in his picture, and presumably, he accomplished this without the assistance of andro.

The description of radio recreations of PCL games sounds a little too familiar: if the telegraph or telephone became temporarily inoperative, the "recreater" would have to have the hitter foul off pitches endlessly until the problem was fixed. That sounds a lot like the legend of how "Dutch" Reagan prolonged Billy Jurges's trip to home plate for a half hour. Did these things really happen or are the stories apocryphal? A delay in transmission sounds more like an excuse for giving the advertisers their money's worth than for a succession of foul balls.

Interestingly enough, these authors seem to disagree with Dobbins on the attitude of the major leagues toward PCL absorption. The PCL made a strong bid for major league membership after World War II, and Dobbins seems to feel that the major league owners thwarted this with an intent of possibly themselves relocating or expanding to the Pacific Coast some day. But Zingg and Medeiros argue that skepticism about the West Coast as a major league locale and about the adequacy of the PCL ballparks was genuine and that relocation to the West Coast really was initially regarded as prohibitively expensive, noting that the marginal teams that did relocate first chose locations in the Midwest such as Milwaukee and Kansas City.

Notwithstanding the title, this book has a brief recapitulation of the league's post-1958 history. It yet exists today as a wholly-controlled minor league adjunct to the majors and even has expanded INTO the Pacific Ocean by adding a team in Hawaii. Even Little Rock has a team - Little Rock, Alaska, that is. But it seems universally agreed that when the Giants and the Dodgers arrived in San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively, in 1958, this was the end of the PCL as traditionally conceived, as the original franchises moved and changed their names.

Still, books like this whet the reader's appetite for more. Surely it isn't too late to ship the Dodgers back to Brooklyn, the Giants to a city like Montreal that might deserve a perennial non-champion, the A's back to Philly or Kansas City, and the other major league West Coast expansion upstarts to oblivion. When the shopping center on 16th and Bryant in San Francisco is torn down to rebuild Seals Stadium and when the studio on Beverly and Fairfax is torn down to rebuild Gilmore Field and when the community center on 42nd and Avalon is torn down to rebuild Wrigley Field and when Oaks Park is rebuilt even alongside the plaque in Emeryville that STILL commemorates the Roy Carlyle blast, the Pacific Coast League can be reborn, and West Coast baseball can awake from its prolonged slumber and begin again in earnest.

The first volume of Ruse follows the adventures of Simon Archard, a cold but brilliant detective, in a world constructed like a twisted version of Victorian England (complete with mobile, bat-eating gargoyles leering from the rooftops). Archard's superhuman displays of logic and observation (and his subhuman empathy levels) are wryly observed by his assistant/partner Emma Bishop, who resents Archard's secretive nature while simultaneously keeping an enormous secret from him. With the addition of a devilish baroness with designs on world denomination and the re-appearance of Archard's old partner, Simon and Emma find their trust in one another being stretched to the limits.

The world of Arcadia is rendered with magnificent attention to detail, and the tight plotting and snappy dialogue (with the banter between Simon and Emma always bringing a smile) elevate this title above the rest of the pack. Combined with the incredible price of the Traveler's Editions, this is a deal much too good to pass up.

i have been reading this book on and off for 10 years. it's very technical in parts, more difficult to read than some of russell's own technical works. but it deals intelligently and informatively with almost all worthy aspects of analytical philosophy. it's not an introduction, rather an informed commentary through the lens of contemporary developments since Russell.

Dr. Cichock's book is easily accessible to the layman and would also be a valuable addition to any professional political scientist's library. He gives the reader an introduction to comparative and international politics and an historical overview of the region in the book's first section. In the second section, he gives a thorough and insightful look into the Russian Federation's current political climate. His third and final section concludes with four case studies which examine in depth four Post-Soviet nation-states, which were carefully chosen to represent the general character of the regions in which they are located. Though Dr. Cichock seens to be a democratic idealist and free-market advocate, he never makes the mistake of recommending specific actions for Russia and the successor states. He never tries to play gypsy fortune-teller by forecasting probable events, either. His prose remains true to a detailed and thorough structural analysis of the political systems of the states in question. In his case studies, he shows reserve in using value judgements to convey his message and eschews complex tables of quantitative data. This displays his considerable skills of evaluating information synthetically as well as analytically. His work is well footnoted and draws heavily from authoritative primary source material and his selection of secondary sources is of the highest possible caliber. This book is also a truly enjoyable read for even the most casual of students of the Post-Soviet region. My only complaint would have to be that in weighing in at 281 pages, it is simply too short for me.

This biography records the recollections of Lord Rutherford "at home, on holiday, and in the laboratory" (book jacket). The author also includes memories of this great scientist from his contemporaries, colleges, and students. A foreword, provided by James Chadwick, offers insight into Rutherford's character and personal life. The book focuses on the time period from Rutherford's acceptance of the Cavendish Chair of Physics at Cambridge to his Death in 1937. The author attempts to bridge the gap between the history of science and the formulation of new scientific concepts.

Ready reference to help managers quickly perform effective organizational diagnosis related to the most common performance issues and problem areas. Based on a preliminary problem diagnosis, managers are then guided through a step-by-step process that identifies possible causes, recommends appropriate corrective actions, and even provides sufficient information to understand each possible action. Also serves as an excellent tool to use in conducting a "sanity-check" prior to implementation of planned actions. From validation of "hunches" to discovering which problems AND solutions are costly or difficult to implement or which are simply quick fixes vs. long-term solutions, this book can help managers decide what they can fix with and without outside assistance. If your organization uses management consultants, this is the ONE business book that could save you from unnecessary consulting fees or can be used to validate any recommended approach prior to committing the "big bucks."

Schoenberg says, "consciousness-raising is what it's called, but demand for conformity is what it's all about."

Right!

But Schoenberg's having none of that, and that's why the book's a good read. From beginning to end, Schoenberg gives you food for thought. And gets you to question your belief system. The material on sexual harassment panels is a case in point. In all honesty I must say that although I hadn't given much thought to the work that these panels do I was generally of the opinion that (1) they were necessary and (2) that they were probably doing a good job. Now I'm not so sure. Same thing happened after I read about how people go about setting themselves up as victims. In sum, the book left a good taste in my mouth: my mind wasn't always changed by the author's argument, but I genuinely liked having my assumptions challenged. And the book reminded me of something I had almost forgotten, i.e., always challenge conventional wisdom!

Clever use of internet posters. Added a different and very interesting dimension to the story.

This book is a great read. It's interesting, it's entertaining, it's educational - what more could you want?
There's no central theme to the book, but there is a recurring one. Which is, when our enemies in times past used mind control techniques, "we" called it brainwashing. Or political reeducation. And blasted them for their cruel and inhumane ways. But times have changed and so, apparently, have attitudes about mind control. Or so "they" would have us believe. An intriguing question, this: just who are "they"? (Schoenberg shows us how to unravel that puzzler.) In any event, "they" have worked tirelessly to convince the rest of us that political correctness is not mind control. But if it is, it's a benign force, and will make us better persons. It's all for our own good. The word is, PC is A-OK. For those of us who don't buy into that contrived bit of illogic, the message is "get used to it.." Schoenberg doesn't buy that argument. Neither do I..
But there's a lot more to this book than grousing about the zaniniess of political correctness.
Schoenberg provides a good bit of information about counseling and therapy ' what it is and what it is not! ' and gives his views on relationships ' taking time to look at the age-old question, i.e., "when to hold and when to fold." His material on harassment panels should prove to be a wake-up call for those readers who know little or nothing about them.
Chapter 9, titled God and the Law, is funny. In a not-so-funny kind of way. Cutting humour wielded like a double edged sword.
As an into to Chapter 11, Schoenberg said he didn't like to get into discussions about either religion or politics, and then proceeded to discuss ' what else? Religion and politics! Go figure.
Lastly, Schoenberg takes a long hard look at several of the professions. What he writes about doctors and lawyers is a riot. (Or not. If you, your spouse or off-spring is one or the other, you may not be amused.)

I loved this book. It tells how Sade's life was and how it all began. Sade is the most beautiful woman and has a great band. I advise any Sade fan to have this book or at least read it. It is a amazing book. Love you and admire you Sade!