This is a book for people that think scientists walk around in white coats spouting equations at each other and relating dysfunctionaly to the rest of the world. Learn about science as a way of life, a way of seeing the world and accepting its challenges. Yes, Africa is somewhat of a mess, but as Africa goes, so may go the planet. Tom Bass brings you beautifully into this chaos and gives you the flavor of life with scientists who have let it all hang out, put it all on the line, in their fascination with and commitment to an important way of looking at the world. It's a new genre: Guerilla Science.

Camping With the Prince, a 1990 book by the science journalist Thomas Bass, is a rare find and highly recommended. Most books on contemporary Africa are gloomy and angry. Some are hostile towards Africans, some towards Westerners, some towards both. Camping With the Prince is neither. Instead it is a fascinating look at things which are going right. Bass deserves praise for that alone. But his topics are fascinating in their own right. In seven chapters, Bass investigates seven areas of scientific research in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa. They range from sustainable forestry in Mali, to the response of nomad communities in Kenya to food shortages, Nigerian research on insect pests and virology, and on to paleoanthropology and the mating habits of the multicolored cichlid fish of Lake Malawi. To the extent there are villains in this book, they are international specialists in foreign aid, who have spent forty years delivering bad advice on agricultural policy and building dams that spread the guinea worm. But in fact the villains are very few. Much more common are people like Thomas Risley Odhiambo, a Kenyan entomologist who founded the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, which carries out world-class research on low-impact pest controls. Bass asks Dr. Odhiambo how Kenya -- and by extension Africa generally -- can afford such a program when many Kenyans have no potable drinking water. Odhiambo makes an equally obvious reply: '"My own feeling is that we have to run on twin tracks," he says. "We have the longer-range problems that depend on science and technology. We must solve them. At the same time we must tackle these problems arising from urbanization and dislocation from the land. If we take only one track and not the other, we will be in worse trouble, because we will have no future in terms of strategies for the long run." Odhiambo's realistic but hopeful attitude -- a recognition of contemporary problems, coupled with the faith that Africa can overcome and transcend them -- is typical of the people Bass meets. They are Africans like Odhiambo and the Nigerian virologist Oyewale Tomori, Westerners like Jeremy Swift, an Englishman who has spent fifteen years living among nomads in the dry savannas, and even East Asians like Odhiambo's Chinese colleague Lu Qing Guang, who conducts research on insects like the trichogramma wasp which prey on common pests. The book has one minor flaw, in that it presents readers with seven more or less independent chapters rather than a coherent narrative. Bass also demands some effort from the reader, as his book addresses complex scientific issues without condescension. Those who will be put off by discussions of nematodes, Lorenzian biological aggression theory or the life cycle of the tsetse fly will find parts of the book pretty dense. But most readers who take up a book like this will view technical detail a strength rather than a weakness. And altogether, Camping With the Prince is a well-written, welcome respite from the bleak tone of most writing on modern Africa. Bass has done a fine job and deserves readers.

Six step approach systematically guides the process of problem identification,needs assessment, writing goals and objectives, educational strategies, implementation process, and getting worthwhile evaluation and feedback. Based upon Johns Hopkins Internal Medicine model but substantial utility for all medical disciplines. I will use it in redesigning curriculum at my institution. Highly recommended!

Paul Evans DO, Associate Dean for Curricular Affairs, Oklahoma State University COM

This book is really useful for me to catch all of the information that I need it. It is really will give me a lot of help. I love to read it.

This book comes with 2 CD's you can play along with. There isn't much text/theory it teaches by having you play exercises. I'm more of an audio learner so this was great for me. The book teaches blues and improvisation in a number of different keys with an emphasis on accents and articulation that really comes thru when you hear it played on the CD. This is a good place to start learning Jazz.

I have read, and re-read this book about 4 times. Each new season coming off a bad previous tournament season, I re-read it and find it to be a grounding factor in my goal setting for the coming year. I feel like I know Joe personally at this point. His insight into what really happens in Competitive Fishing is exceptional, and details the real world responsibilities of what it takes to be a National Touring Bass Pro. The financial part of it may be a little outdated, because the sport and payouts of Full Time Tournament Fishing have increased greatly since 1996, but the content and mental aspects of this book make it one that needs to be in any serious bass tournament anglers library.

This diary of one angler (Joe Thomas) for a year in high profile professional tournament fishing offers something to everyone from the weekend fisherman to the local tournament trail angler. I not only enjoyed reading about the competition of the tournaments themselves, but also the attention to detail and preparation that is involved in being a pro angler. The book made it clear that these guys work hard for their money both on and off the water. Most days' entries would include "I'm exhausted and going to bed early" but would be followed by "Worked on my tackle before hitting the rack". These guys really have their priorities in line. Joe must have taken the oath of "Be Prepared" seriously in the scouts (even to the point of carrying an extra trolling motor with him in the boat). I was able to draw a few parallels with Joe's experiences as I have fished local tournaments over the past years. Even they have bad days, but not nearly as many as I do. The book also offers up strategies he employs both on practice days and competition days. It was informative to know why he made the moves and choices he made. There are also short by lines with tips and tactics that all of us can use to avoid those bad days.

All and all the book is an informative and an easy read. It is one I will pull out again and again to get me thru the winter months waiting on spring fishing to arrive.

As a former touring Bass pro myself, I have to say that Thomas & Tucker capture what it is really like out on the professional fishing circuit. Perhaps the only thing missing or in error related to the book vs. the tour today is simply one of a forgiving level of competition. The book was written in the early 90's when a competator could have a bad tournament and still make the classic. Such is not the case these days in most situations. A single stumble can ruin a year's chance at the classic.

Otherwise, a great look inside a much mis-understood and little seen side of the sport.

I had the opportunity to read this book for one of the courses in master's degree program. It starts off extremely slow! As you get a little further into the book, it becomes more palatable and more interesting. The author brings up some interesting points and did make me rethink my views as a teacher.

In the preface to this book, a delectable mix of philosophy, theory, and stories from the field, Thomas Sergiovanni states that the primary source of the seeming hopeless efforts to improve our schools "is the loss of community in our schools and in society itself." (p.xi) Effective school improvement efforts, whether they focus on curriculum, teaching, governing structures, teacher and parent empowerment, or assessment, must begin with community building. To this endeavor, Sergiovanni has contributed his book. His argumentis that change-oriented educators must begin to think of schools less as formal organizations and more as communities. By drawing on the communal nature of schooling, "purposeful" school communities can be built through professional relationships, the classroom, and the curriculum.

Sergiovanni argues that in communities, individuals create their "social lives with others who have intentions similar to ours." (p.4) In formal organizations, relationships are constructed for us, rather than by us. This essential difference means that schools have not looked enough to solve problems through internal relationships and have relied too much on external variables. (Sergiovanni does a nice job of contrasting Tonnies theories of gesellschaft -- secular society -- and gemeinshaft -- sacred community.) To improve schools, we must begin to see them as networks of local, interdependent relationships: a community with a sacred mission to nurture and teach each other how to live. Central to the notion of community is relationships. Sergiovanni argues that the character of all relationships is a function of the values of the individuals involved. These values (he discusses seven) are expressed through the core relationships in a school (teacher-student, teacher-teacher, administrator-teacher) and reflect either a community or an organizational orientation to those relationships. Drawing principally from Durkheim's theory of needs, Sergiovanni argues that people have a basic need to belong. Connectedness is achieved through group mores, values, goals, and norms. When a school's values have a community orientation, individuals develop attachment and commitment to each other and in so doing they are more fulfilled and successful. When a school's values have an organizational orientation, individuals become alienated and are less successful and fulfilled.

Sergiovanni argues that school communities can take a variety forms. Whatever form they assume, they must first have purpose. "They must become places where members have developed a community of mind that bonds them together in special ways and binds them to a shared ideology." (p.72) This collective sense of purpose at once nurtures and reflects community values and provides the individuals in the school with a sense of belonging. In this way, Sergiovanni makes a clear case for the need for schools to develop their own cultures through continuous dialogue about mission, vision, values, goals, and group processes - all significant problems and issues for the organizational specialist.

Through conversations about curriculum and teaching, community and culture can be built. Sergiovanni argues for the importance of an "educational platform" through which schools agree on, among other things, the aims of education, what students will achieve, the social significance of students' learning, and images of the learner, the teacher, and the curriculum. Platforms should be sufficiently detailed to provide guidance (requiring discipline to respect and support), yet open enough to allow individuals to retain a sense of autonomy (requiring discretion to apply). Likewise, community and culture are built through the everyday interactions in the classroom. Classrooms are microcosms of society. In a democratic society, community is nurtured through citizenship. Classrooms should be places where students have responsibility and freedom. Most importantly, classrooms should provide students a place to belong, opportunities to succeed and realize their autonomy, and to learn the nature of generosity. Schools that build their "community of mind" from within will find that the curriculum and teaching will be natural outlets for expressing and reproducing their community-oriented values.

Through the practice of educating based on community values, schools develop a professional community. Drawing from Barth and others, Sergiovanni argues that this professional community defines itself by its ability to improve, to develop its culture, and to create an environment that is most conducive to learning for both adults and children. In other words, in a purposeful school community people care about each other enough that they take their mutual obligations seriously (to care for each other and to learn from and teach each other). Communities of learners are built on the spirit of inquiry, which emerges in school cultures that constantly question, "Who are we and what are we trying to accomplish?" Leadership in purposeful, learning communities is diffuse. It is defined not by the power over people or events, but by the "power to accomplish shared goals". (p.170) For any educator who cares deeply about teaching, people, and schools, Sergiovanni's work provides plenty of opportunities for reflection and innumerable examples of schools that have built community into their cultures.

This book is in use in EDAD programs in Texas and elsewhere throughout the country. The main thrust of Sergiovanni's argument is that schools must create a "community of learners" in order to successfully meet the needs of their students. Rather than give this notion common lip service, Sergiovanni details explicit plans for incorporating an authentic community of learners vision into the campus culture. For teachers, school administrators, and others concerned about education, this book is essential reading.

In my experience, the 'conversation' format invariable leads to interesting books. Bass' 'Reinventing the Future' is no exception. There are 11 conversations with leading scientists, spread over 240 pages. That means that every scientist gets sufficient space to explore his or her ideas in depth. The selection of people is imaginative: there is a mix of discipline, gender, culture and character which is well judged. The conversations are invariably well crafted; it's obvious that Bass has done his homework very well. A number of chapters are so insightful that I keep returning to this book again and again. James Black, a pharmacologist who discovered cimetidine and beta blockers, offers a view on pharmaceutical Discovery research which, at the time of the interview (1989), must have been simply visionary. I also derived much insight from Thomas Adeoye Lambo's fusion of Western and traditional ideas on mental illness when studying psychotics and schizophrenics in the villages of his native Nigeria. As an update on important scientific theories this book is slightly dated by now. But as an account of how great scientific personalities work it remains as fresh and relevant as when it was written.

THIS BOOK IS DISJOINTED AND BORING.BASS HAS NO CLEAR FOCUS AND FAILS TO GRIP THE READER. POORLY WRITTEN. THERE ARE PROBLEMS AND ISSUES OF SIGNIFICANT MULTITUDE CAUSED BY WAR, HOWEVER, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE ISSUES CANNOT BE GIVEN UNNECASSARY IMPORTANCE. WAR A TRAGEDY, BUT WE MUST LEARN TO LIVE ON.IF PEOPLE FEEL SO BITTER ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF WAR, THAN PEOPLE SHOULD THINK TWICE BEFORE CAUSES RIFTS BETWEEN NATION STATES.

An excellent attempt to bring attention to the children fathered by American servicemen during the Vietnam war era. I would like to see a similar study on the Amerasian children born in Thailand during this same timeframe. One also wonders how these children coped inside the much more open and modern Thai society, how they found careers in Thailand or later emigrated to the United States.

This well-written book does a good job of accurately capturing the plight of the Amerasians from Vietnam. Great descriptions of characters in Utica, NY and how they changed and/or stayed the same since their time in Amerasian Park in Saigon. Having visited Amerasian Park, I thought of the book and the many other Amerasians that are still in other parts of Vietnam and have been trying to leave.

Vietnamerica shows the challenges the Vietnamericans face, what they think and feel, and the way in which many of them have to deal with not finding their fathers even though they made it back to the U.S.A.

Thought-provoking and informative.

I am a trader. I traded in the pits for years. I traded over-the-counter. Futures and options, vanilla and exotic. I also hold degrees in physics and electrical engineering from MIT. I was hoping to relate to the characters in this book. I didn't at all.

First, my comments on the book as a story. I was interested at first, but was struggling to get through the last third of the book, as characters were developed that seemed like little more than filler. I tired of the endless descriptions of wardrobe and scenery. And, in the end, we don't really find out what happened. Some reviewers complain about lack of technical detail. The book was obviously not written as a scientific treatise, but as a story, so those readers really have no reason to be disappointed in that aspect.

Secondly, my thoughts about the science and the scientists featured in the book. Nonlinear dynamic systems have been studied by all Wall Street firms, even at the time Prediction Co. was doing it. I actually have a fair amount of distaste for this whole subject. What it amounts to is traders, banks, uber investors, etc. looking for the next quick money making opportunity within the latest development (fad some might say) in informational science. That in and of itself is not a bad thing, but a reasonable quest. The reason most of these kinds of endeavors fail is that unification of Wall Street and academia can only be successful if the researchers or modelers have a firm grasp of BOTH worlds. The models ultimately fail because what is really being modelled is human psychology and reaction. Numbers alone do not tell the tale. There is no (legal) way of knowing that the trader at MS just had a blow up with his risk advisor and is angrily dumping his yen position inefficiently, and that UBS knows MS is also long calls so they begin crushing call volatility since they know MS will liquidate them as well. Sure, a chart may have predicted a squeeze, but the details of the actual trading couldn't have been prophesied. Prediction Co. was running thousands of models? This should be the first tip off that they had no idea what the principal components of the market were. They were shooting in the dark.

This was a perfect example of banker types with no technical prowess whatsoever trying to work with ivory tower types with no street savvy. It doesn't work. "Well, traders and quants work together in most trading firms." True, but this is different because there was no established program or models that the quants were running. This was fly by the seat of the pants almost. While I admire the accomplishments of these researchers in academic realms, they were definitely not cut out to be businessmen with their communistic, hippy, and honestly, somewhat lazy, approach to life. Yes, some succeed, you have your accasional Bill Gates (although I would argue he was extremely business-headed), but not many. Look at the dot-com debacle. Same story.

Lastly, do you really think that anyone who truly tapped into the Holy Grail of trading would actually allow a book to be written about it?

Well I picked up the book as I am interested in complexity science. Most of the reviews here are quite harsh, and probably it was bad expectations management on writer's / publisher's part.

Even though the book sometimes is promoted as an investing book, it is not. It is not meant for day traders who just expect to discover next holy grail of financial markets reading such books. There is no holy grail in markets, but thats another thing. With that said, it may be clear that it is not a TRADING / INVESTIING book.

The book is story of two renowned physicists turning to use their physics, specifically chaos theory, to model financial market. The story part is dealt with great care. I am sure you learn a thing or two reading this book. This book was quite reasy to read and time I spent reading was worth more than had I spent reading a Grisham novel or watching some stupid soap on TV. It is real life here folks.

Bass is not a novelist so I did not expect him write a literary piece here. He has written a true story in a very good way and struggle of Farmer and Packard in estabilshing a company and utilizing their knowldge in a productive way is very cleverly depicted. There are tonnes of other relevant information that come and go, and an intelligent reader would surely pick something here. There is a lot of current history explored here.

With that said, this is NOT a book for the NEXT TRADING SYSTEM, nor does it preach that their system was PERFECT.

Interesting adventures, better than the Hardy Boys! On one page Doyne's replacing the differential in his old van in the desert, several pages later he's suited up (unwillingly, presumably) dueling intellectually with the experts at Goldman-Sachs. In between he's writing checks to keep the fledgling company alive. Like I said, beats Hardy Boys hands down! Bass includes a good description of neo-classical economics ideas, still widely believed by many economicsts far and wide, as in the case of the failed LTCM, not to mention Enron, the IMF, world Bank, and US advisors to Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, thailand, Russia, .... . Significantly, LTCM was guided in part by two Nobel Prize winning neo-classical economists who characteristically proceded implicitly as if there would be 'springs' in the market to enforce the 'no arbitrage' assumption at long (but not too-long...) times. I personally don't believe that the future can be forecast reliably, but then according to a member of The Company they found a small (few %) advantage and sold it to UBS. A gambler with a small bankrole would suffer the gamblers' ruin while trying to bet on such weak correlations. Actually, the hat on the cover looks vaguely familiar, but then what's in a hat?