I was throughly disappointed with Dr. Axelrod's book on Fraternal orders. I am an educated man, and a member of over 25 friendly socities. Axelrod definately read Schmidt's 1980 book Fraternal Orginizations. This is illustrated via his reporting that "this groups has not been heard of since 1980." What he is actually saying is "that the group has moved headquarters since 1980(when Schmidt reported it)and I do not want to take time and research the new location." He declares several groups to be long since dead, however they are very much alive. I wish Dr. Axelrod would have looked for sources better, he could have had a better book. This information takes a little bit of hard work to find, however it is easily accessable. after reading various texts I am able to see how Axelrod merely copies their work. I would suggest buying this book, it is fairly interesting, however it is full of inaccurate info.

I THINK THIS is a great encylopida about a rare subject.I think alot of pepole don't understand sercert societies.They made a mistake thought it sayes the Russian Knights are on a certain page# but therers no info on them.Its very informative thought.They should update it for '02-03'.

Not very, as the author makes clear in this fascinating tour of organizations from the Abecedairiens (who were suspicious of the newfangled printing press), to the Zuzumites (a defunct order about which little is known).
Comprehensive treatment is given of the Freemasons, Moose, Red Men, and other fraternal groups, and many others such as the Ku Klux Klan, Mafia, Lions, Rosicrucians, Knights of Columbus, and the famous E Clampus Vitus, a gold rush relic which survives in the California Gold Country today as a drinking and hellraising society.
Of special interest are the "secrets" of the secret societies, such as "grips" (secret handshakes), oaths, ceremonies and rituals, and "magic".Fascinating reading.
(The numerical rating above is a default setting within Amazon"s format. This reviewer does not employ numerical ratings.)

While at a book store today, I happened to notice a copy of the Complete Idiot's Guide to the 20th Century, and started flipping through it. When I stopped at the point where it described the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939, I was appalled to see that in Alan Axelrod's alternate universe, Finland was annexed on March 12, 1940. In the universe the rest of us live in, Finland earned the distinction of being the only country in history to have defeated a Soviet attempt at annexation, and also never became a communist satellite state. In a brutal 105-day conflict that saw grossly outnumbered and out-gunned Finnish forces inflict defeat upon defeat on Soviet armies, sometimes annihilating entire Soviet divisions such as at the battle of Suomussalmi-Raate in late December 1939-early January 1940, the Finns cost the enemy 500 thousand dead, with a corresponding loss of only 25 thousand on the Finnish side. In fact, Nikita Krushchev claimed in his 1971 memoirs that soviet losses mounted as high as a million. Finland saved its independence, but did lose the Salla Heights, southern Karelia, and islands in the Gulf of Finland. Though the Finns' front lines were well east of the demarcation line forced upon them by the armistace agreement, the Finns could not keep up with the Soviets' enormous resouces of manpower and equipment. It must be remembered that Finland's entire population at the time was only about 3.6 million. In 1941, Finland went on the offensive against the Russians after they mounted sapper raids at the border and bombed Finnish targets from the air, coinciding with the German invasion of Soviet-held territory in Operation Barbarossa. Finland succeeded in regaining the territories which they had lost to communist aggression, and also occupied Soviet territory all the way out to Lake Onega for strategic reasons. By 1944, with Germany losing its war, and endless hordes of Soviet troops and weaponry coming at the Finns again, Finland again had to bow out of the war, losing the same territories lost in the Winter War, plus Petsamo province in the north-east. However, Finland again defeated the Soviet plan to destroy the nation and its people. Total Finnish losses in the Winter War and Continuation War combined were about 80 thousand, compared to losses on the Soviet side of at least a million, if not twice that number. As a Finn myself, I found the book's claim that Finland was annexed by the Soviets in March 12, 1940 (the armistice date) supremely insulting. Complete Idiot's Guide, indeed.

I picked up this book because I'm studying the Middle East conflict and wanted a general overview of what was happening in the rest of the world in the 20th century. This book did not help.

The author admits, in several places, that this book was written from an American perspective for an American reader -- and he should have added -- who is studying American history. If you're using this as background supplement for eventual study of American history, this book may help (though I would recommend "A People's History of the US" instead).

If, however, you're studying any other region around the world, this book puts too much emphasis on American events and too little emphasis on the rest of the world.

I am a history major and I loved this book. It was a nice review of the 20th century. It hit all the main ideas without overwhelming the reader with too detailed facts. It is easy to read and really captures your attention, something hard for a nonfiction text-book like book to do. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in a general account of the 20th century.

This cheerful and snappy little book offers a host of helpful suggestions for using your time and talents. You will appreciate Alan Axelrod and Jim Holtje's humor, practicality, and common sense. Their advice - which applies to people at all organizational levels - ranges from planning timely and productive meetings to using the telephone wisely. They also discuss voice-mail etiquette, the best way to start your day, travel tips, and how to improve your reading speed and skills. You will benefit from the suggestions for managing your personal time, too. Supervisors can use this book to help their employees manage time more skillfully. The book is short and to the point, and happily devoid of verbosity. We at getAbstract.com recommend it as a text that will help you save time, calm frustrations, increase efficiency, multiply successes, impress others, and please yourself.

This book is a good source of information to making more time in your day. I t does not touch on somethings i would have expected in a time management guide. It does not show your how to plan ahead for the next day or the next week. I feel that planning a head is a great deal of what time managemnt is about. I feel that this book could work for those people who do not plan far in advance but it has not done much in my planning part of time management.

this book will help no one in the bar buissnes, half the drink resepes wrong, and not spesific the people who wrote this book don't know anything about mixing drinks. and who ever gave this book 5 stars is drunk. i need to know how to reture this book.

"The Complete Idiot's Guide to Mixing Drinks" is a wonderful book, filled with anecdotes, tips, and histories of spirits. It takes a basic, straightfoward approach to bartending that is easy to understand and use. The book is very thorough, and is best used in conjunction with a simple recipe book. It is NOT simply a book of recipes, however. I find it to be far superior to similar books (i.e. "Bartending for Dummies.")

Authors Alan Axelrod and Jim Holtje have compiled 201 ways tosay "no" in different situations and to different types ofpeople - colleagues and co-workers, salespeople, clients andcustomers, your boss, your subordinates, and job seekers. You can say"no" to extra work, nuisance tasks, unreasonable demands, badideas, and misguided sales pitches. The book offers some good ideas,although its approach is scatter-shot and somewhat superficial. Mostof the ideas are based on common sense approaches to turning peopledown, such as suggesting alternatives, providing explanations, beingdiplomatic, and being firm if that's appropriate. You may have to bepatient to ferret out the ideas that apply to your needs, but they'rein here somewhere. We... recommend this book to junior employees, whoare most likely to want to say "no," and to those who feelimposed upon because they can't say no. END

Alan Axelrod has used a broad brush approach to chronicle the Red-White conflicts of North America from earliest times through to 1890.

The album-style book, with boxed articles to complement the main story, gives the reader a good overview of the conflicts and personalities and this, plus a good chronology and bibliography, points the reader to a more detailed reading of specific eras. Because of Axelrod's book, together with a recent visit to South Dakota and New Mexico, my interest to read more on Native American history has been stimulated, particularly the warfare on the Plains, from the 1860s to 1890, during the period of the great Lakota chief Red Cloud, (plus Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull).

The colonial period, for which I have had an abiding passion is also well covered including King Philip's War (1675-6), a war that pro-rata of population was the most savage fought on American soil; plus the revolutionary struggles of the great Loyalist Indian, Joseph Brant.

I thought I had detected a minor error when the author had a sub-heading claiming King William's War (1689-97) started in 1688, which was a bit difficult as the Orangeman did not take the crown off James II until the end of that year and the war really commenced the following year. However, the author qualifies it in the text to say the early skirmishing was known as the Abnaki War with intensification taking place in North America after the European conflict commenced in 1689.
Also a book of 280 pages covering such a vast period can, by definition, only give an overview of the period.

Nevertheless Axelrod has produced an entertaining chronicle of periods of intensely interesting, if often forgotten, aspects of American history.

This book would be an appropriate gift for foreigners who have just recently been granted American citizenship; it includes many people, places and things which are important to American cultural history, and the reading level is not difficult. If you were born and raised in the USA, this book will be a pleasant trip down memory lane. Most of the "places and things" entries were familiar to me, but there were countless "people" entries that I had never even heard of. Unfortunately, the photographic illustrations are of poor quality.

This book lacked a lot of focus in what it wanted to accomplish. Was it trying to give tips on how to win at Monopoly or trying to show how the game teaches lessons to be applied to real life? In both cases, it came up lacking. The tips it gave were rather common-sensical, the stories it shared didn't really give any insight into how the game applies to business, and to top it off, it didn't not give accurate rules to the game. For example, the book said that you couldn't collect rent while in jail, so you should always try to stay out of jail and in the game, just like in life. That's a nice maxim to live by, but you CAN collect rent while in jail and every good business person knows that there are times to be aggressive and times to be conservative. Overall, the book was very disappointing and I hope only to spare others from making the same mistake of wasting time reading it.

In the "real world" it is quite difficult to accurately assess all of the conditions that lead to a venture's success or failure. There are myriad reasons why the information needed to do so is simply not available which range from disclosure restrictions for a continuing business to fear of suit by the principals of a failed business. As such, it is, as a rule, quite difficult to completely analyze the success or failure of a real enterprise - though many have tried.

In Everything I Know About Business I Learned From Monopoly, Axelrod tries to impart business wisdom through a mechanism that can be completely analyzed, the game of Monopoly. As such, he provides insightful commentary on how the game and the "real world" are both similar and different. He illustrates, for example, how in business watching for industry or customer-base changes is similar to watching for the change of game phases in Monopoly, and how both are critical to the decisions that you make to ensure continued prosperity.

Over all, the book is very specific on Monopoly-playing suggestions (mentioning the probabilities attached to rolling dice and landing on properties many times) and somewhat vague on the specifics of applying these principals in business. This is to be expected, though, as the book is clearly about analyzing the game and applying the lessons learned to the business world. Within that context, it does its job quite well.

This book is basically a simulation and, like any simulation, its value is determined by the reader's ability to apply its lessons to reality. At the very least, you will get to read a variety of interesting quotations by industry-leaders; for the more attentive and imaginative readers, the game of Monopoly will provide a whole new mechanism for testing strategies for business in general.

Half the books seems to be devoted on how to win at the board game, and the other half on how the game applies to real life. If you play the board game you will probably like that it kills two birds with one stone;" If not, you may be destracted occasionally. For example, one page show the odds of someone landing on a certain property.Other than that, the book was amusing, and contained enough practical advice that makes it worth the purchase price.

While a complete well-grounded book for the public on the DISC dimensions of behavior is critically needed, Mr. Ritchey seems to have attempted to create an entirely new DISC self-assessment tool that is not based on the original framework of Marston, Jung, Cleaver, Hendrickson, and certainly not Geier who developed the DISC profile Ritchey purportedly has used for years. A publication for the masses who have been exposed to DISC behavior concepts, assessments, profiles, "tests", and tools is sorely needed. This book adds not to clarity, but to the confusion of the users of DISC tools for personal and professional growth. DISC conceptually is a strong assessment in today's marketplace. Used correctly a DISC Profile will create "miracles." Not only is the book gravely inaccurate and misleading in places (specifically the history section), it provides "tests" for the public that are invalid, unreliable, and inaccurate. I was very disappointed in this book.

This book brings DiSC to life, and makes it understandable. It contains a detailed description of the various behavioral style combinations that are possible, and does a good job of explaining them in simple language, without much of the technical jargon that can sometimes accompany assessment tools.

The book includes a DiSC assessment tool, which is somewhat different than what is available commercially, but seemed accurate when I compared my results vs. other versions.

I've used DiSC® with several clients of mine. We usually spend class time explaining DiSC® and the theories behind it. This book could be easily used as pre-work to save class time during any training or consulting intervention involving behaviors, conflict, communication, team-building, management or leadership development.

I found this book light reading with virtually every sentence applicable to the real world. If you are an HRD, Training, Business or Personal Coach or Consulting Professional, you need this book in your toolkit!

I highly recommend this book to readers of all ages.