This is a wonderful revisionary view of a bunch of authors who put me to sleep in high school. Peyser pulls the pants down on the "old grey ladies" of American literature. Someone had to do it (I guess) and I'm glad it was him and not me, but I'm also glad to have this rather strange and wondrous book.

Up until now, Peyser has been known mostly for his uproarious commentaries on NPR, and for his notorious flipping off of Cokie Roberts on the old David Brinkley show. (He has never been invited back.) I have to admit that when I first saw this book I just assumed it was another of his spoofs, but it turns out that Peyser is a bona fide literary critic. There is some very funny stuff about the vastly overrated Charlotte Perkins Gilman--Peyser cuts the old trog down to size--but mostly this is very smart and very down-to-earth cultural criticism. We have to be grateful for this book, but I for one cannot help but feel a little sad, too, since it would seem that with its publication P. has shed his youthful guise of hilarity, and that he has now stepped into full manhood, revealing what most of us have always suspected underlay the shimmering surface of his speech: knowledge of what Matt Arnold named "the eternal note of sadness."

You know, this is not the sort of book I would normally read. But there it was, suddenly, on the coffee table one night. How it got there I have no idea. Just curious, I began to leaf through the pages, and the words began to resonate with me. Unable to sleep, I read it through in one sitting by candlelight. The next morning, I began to look at things around me differently. First, I removed several unessential appliances from the house in an effort to simplify my existence. Then it became time to de-clutter and I threw out several items I realized I had no more use for. Then, and this all seemed so logical in light of the things I'd read, I divorced the wife and sent her on her why. Sure, she cried a bit, but I knew I was doing the right thing. And I've never regretted it. This is, indeed, one of the best books I've read all year.

I have had the opportunity to hear Dave Edwards speak. He has a wonderful, sincere heart for the Lord. His book has the most encouraging scripture and prayers then any other book I have read. He uses wonderful stories and real life documents to help us better understand the Lords awesome love. I recommend this book to any one who is struggling with their daily walk with God or anyone who wants to develop a closer relationship with God. I hope that you will read this book and realize that it is just "One Step Closer" to God's awesome, uncondition love!!! THANK YOU DAVE FOR YOUR DEDICATION TO THE LORD!

Just read this book, after getting it at the National Gen-X Conference. I found it Biblical, truthful, intreaging, comical, honest, thought provoking, and truly REAL. Just what this generation needs. You will not want to put it down.

This book is really cool. My college group is using it for small group study. It is easy to read, but great fun as well. I have learned so much. It is COOL.

Thurber's "The Thirteen Clocks" is one of the best books ever written. The fairy-tale plot line appeals to both the young and the young at heart. No matter your age, after reading this book you will come away feeling like the world is not as rough of a place as it seemed about a half an hour ago. This book is also great to read to young children. While it doesn't have a poetic meter, the dialogue and narration progress in an almost sing-songy way that will hold the attention of even the most restless child.

I thought that this book was a great book and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to read great fairy tale. A tale with Princes, Princess and an evil Duke. I couldn't put the book down. It was short and sweet. There is a simple plot and characters that are easy to relate to. There were many descriptive sentences that painted detailed pictures in your head. I also enjoyed the pictures in the book and found them very amusing. This book as some surprising twists in it that you would never guess. Again I would highly recommend this book for anyone of all ages that just want to read something that is good and it doesn't take him or her days to read. It is just an awesome book to read. I hope you enjoy it.

I first heard this enchantingly wonderful book on cassette tape when i was at art lessons. I would wait impatiently till the next week so I could hear more~ more about the Golux (who resembles only half the things he says he doesn't) and about Princess Saralinda and the Prince whose name begins with X... and doesn't. This book is full of whimsical wonderful wordplay and contains almost all of my favorite quotations of all time. It isn't very long, but every sentence is filled with some little quips or verbal oddities that, quite literally, made me laugh aloud. This book is without question one of my favorites of all time, a truly wonderful tale that can be read over and over again without ever growing old. Really classique. I mean, the book that's given me my tagline HAS to be great: "We all have flaws and mine is being evil."

The artwork in Amphigorey is absolutely amazing. The style is reminiscent of a very old cartoon. Every single frame of each story is so detailed, and the lines are so intricate and precise, it's as if Gorey spent days on each drawing.

The stories which are illustrated by these drawings are very creepy. Many of the stories are incredibly pointless. Some of them end awfully, others don't really end at all. Some aren't stories, but rather collections of poems with a title. At times, things get quite disgusting. For example, in one set of alphabetical poems entitled "The Fatal Lozenge," the last poem goes like this:

The ZOUAVE used to war and battle
Would sooner take a life than not:
It scarcely has begun to prattle
When he impales a hapless tot.

This is accompanied by an illustration of a baby pinned through its abdomen with a sword and blood dripping down. But no matter what, everything in this collection is interesting and unique. This book is at no time dull or boring. Plus, it makes a great conversation piece. I love showing people my Amphigorey book! Most people have never heard of Edward Gorey and are entirely surprised that such a bizarre book even exists.

In any case, if you don't already have it, you should definitely get this book! It's such a great thing to have around the house, you'll never regret owning it!

When I first picked up this book, I had no idea what to expect. I was even more bewildered when I opened it up and looked at the drawings. I thought to myself, what in the world is this? Then I started reading.

Edward Gorey's work is at times subtle or broad, ironic or slaptstick, and always brilliant. How dare this man call himself a children's book author! His books are for everyone, not just tots. Startlingly funny and morbid, the books in this volume (and his other collections) will make the reader laugh and snicker until they are sick. The dark humor of "the Gashlycrumb Tinies", the burlesque of "the Curious Sofa", the absurdity of "the Doubtful Guest", the dry wit of "the Unstrung Harp", every story is different. Every story is a gem. Gorey's books are a must-have for absolutely everybody.

You have not fully lived until you have read Amphigorey!
With it's delightful pieces of artwork and sometimes unintellgible use of verse Edward Gorey's first fifteen books come together in what I would call a brilliant spectacle of cloaked and sometimes deceased spectres.
With stories such as The Hapless Child a story my fifty year old father described as sad and twistedly morbid (needless to say he never asked to look at the book again) and The Curious Sofa a story that hints pornographic ideals but does not detail or embellish them will revoulting sex scenes...the story's lines just merely plant naughty thoughts in your head and your brain travels on from there, it is a classic book, a book I've cherished for years and would love to see referred to as a classic work of art rather than mere fiction and humor!

I was turned on to this book after hearing the latest Richard Buckner release "The Hill", in which the musician uses the Spoon River Anthology as the basis for his conceptual music. After listening to this wonderful disc, I was compelled to read the actual work by Edgar Lee Masters. What I found was a book that was written in 1915, but that brings to life the voices of humanity louder than anything I've read in recent years. This book is more poetry than literature, but the stories of the residents of Spoon River that are collected within the pages are stories that are not soon forgotten.

This book has moved me more than anything else I've read in recent years, and I highly recommend that othes read this outstanding work of art.

There is no Spoon River, IL. Check your map. Several towns argue that they stake their claim in being what Masters asserted to be this mythical town. Petersburg and Lewistown, two towns of otherwise minor repute seem closest... but it is so much better we haven't an actual town... Spoon River's residents are our next door neighbors, whether we live in Central Illinois or Central Florida, or southern Alaska.

Masters has written not fables, but the essence of American life. He hasn't captured the life and times of 1915, but has instead recorded in 1915 the life and times of our present day America.

The same reason the paintings of Norman Rockwell makes sense is why Edgar Lee Masters poetry makes sense. To read the quick messages on the gravestone of one man, learning a little bit him, and something about a neighbor or two, we can learn a little about how we live in communities today.

Our lives, like Jimmy Stewart's character in "It's a Wonderful Life" found out, interact and impact everyone we meet. Who we love, who we should love and who we reject. And when we die, others feel the loss. Masters has aptly put this in a humorous, yet insightful way into short verses.

The poems don't rhyme. The meter is not solid, and the poetics aren't intricate. They aren't poems like Poe's or Dickinson, not in the way they wrote American poems. Don't expect iambic pentameter-based sonnets or villanelles. Expect a conversation, and listen in.

The poetry here is in the subtle use of social nuance. In the nuances are his insight and wit. Two readings will bring to light what you miss in the first.

Buy this book, read it slow. It reads faster than most poetry book, but don't get caught in the temptation to zoom through each poem just because you can.

After you read it, see the play if it happens to be performed in your town.

I fully recommend it.

Anthony Trendl

Inspired by The Greek Anthology, a collection of brief poems from the Hellenistic World including epitaphs written from the perspective of the deceased, Edgar Lee Masters wrote a series of monologues spoken by dead townspeople (some more fictional than others) who inhabited Spoon River, the area in Illinois where Abe Lincoln once lived. Real people include Anne Rutledge (Abe's first girlfriend) and Fiddler Jones, who worked in Lincoln's general store as a boy.

But this book isn't about Abraham Lincoln. It's about the trait that we will all, both saints and sinners, one day have in common: death. And it is about the small triumphs of life that the dead remember. Just as William Carlos Williams was a doctor, and his poetry was informed by his contact with everyday people, so too Masters. He was a lawyer and a keen observationist. He writes directly and frankly, especially about male-female relations, which earned this book a bit of a scandalous reputation in its time. Of course, it is mild enough today that the book is assigned reading in junior highs, even in the South.

I've read this book three times through, and often re-read individual favorites. And I have it in easy reach on my shelf because I plan to keep re-reading it. There is something about the people of Spoon River and their sentiments that keeps me coming back. As May Swenson says, in her introduction to this edition, Masters "bequeathed to us a world in microcosm." A world, in my opinion, worth exploring again and again.

On reading this again after a couple of decades, I am struck with how brilliantly it is written. The subtlety and incisiveness of Wilson's prose is startling at times, and the sheer depth of his insight into human nature something close to breath-taking. I am also surprised at how well this holds up after twenty-three years. There is very little in Wilson's many acute observations that would need changing. Also, it is interesting to see, in retrospect, that it is this book and not his monumental, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), that continues to serve as an exemplar for later texts. For example, Paul Ehrlich's recent book on evolution was entitled On Human Natures (2000), the plural in the title demonstrating that it was written at least in part as a reaction to Wilson. I also note that some other works including Matt Ridley's The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.(1993), Robert Wright's The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (1994), and most recently, Bobbi S. Low's Why Sex Matters: A Darwinian Look at Human Behavior (2000), are organized intellectually in such a manner as to directly update chapters in Wilson's book.

On Human Nature was written as a continuation of Sociobiology, greatly expanding the final chapter, "Man: From Sociobiology to Sociology." In doing so, Wilson has met with reaction from some quarters similar to the reaction the Victorians gave Darwin. Wilson's sociobiology was seen as a new rationale for the evils of eugenics and he was ostracized in the social science and humanities departments of colleges and universities throughout the United States and elsewhere. Rereading this book, I can see why. Wilson's primary "sin" is the unmitigated directness of his expression and his refusal to use the shield and obfuscation of politically correct language. Thus he writes on page 203, "In the pages of The New York Review of Books, Commentary, The New Republic, Daedalus, National Review, Saturday Review, and other literary journals[,] articles dominate that read as if most of basic science had halted during the nineteenth century." On page 207, he avers, "Luddites and anti-intellectuals do not master the differential equations of thermodynamics or the biochemical cures of illness. They stay in thatched huts and die young."

In the first instance, he has offended the intellectual establishment by pointing out their lack of education, and in the second his incisive expression sounds a bit elitist. But Wilson is not an elitist, nor is he the evil eugenic bad boy that some would have us believe. He is in fact a humanist and one of the world's most renowned scientists, a man who knows more about biology and evolution than most of his critics put together.

I want to quote a little from the book to demonstrate the incisive style and the penetrating nature of Wilson's ideas, and in so doing, perhaps hint at just what it is that his critics find objectionable. In the chapter on altruism, he writes, "The genius of human sociality is in fact the ease with which alliances are formed, broken, and reconstituted, always with strong emotional appeals to rules believed to be absolute" (p. 163). Or similarly on the next page, "It is exquisitely human to make spiritual commitments that are absolute to the very moment they are broken." Or, "The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool" (p. 167). He ends the chapter with the stark, Dawkinsian conclusion that "Morality has no other demonstrable ultimate function" than to keep intact the genetic material.

In the chapter on aggression, he posits, "The evolution of warfare was an autocatalytic reaction that could not be halted by any people, because to attempt to reverse the process unilaterally was to fall victim" (p. 116). On the next page, he quotes Abba Eban on the occasion of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, "men use reason as a last resort."

In the chapter on religion, he argues that the ability of the individual to conform to the group dynamics of religion is in itself adaptive. As he avers on page 184, "When the gods are served, the Darwinian fitness of the members of the tribe is the ultimate if unrecognized beneficiary."

It is easy to see why some people might be offended at such a frank and penetrating expression. But one of the amazing things about Wilson is that he can be bluntly objective about humanity without being cynical. I have always found his works to be surprisingly optimistic. He has the ability to see human beings as animals, but as animals with their eyes on the stars. In the final chapter entitled, "Hope," Wilson presents his belief that our world will be improved as scientific materialism becomes the dominate mythology. Note well this point: Wilson considers scientific materialism, like religion and the macabre dance of Marxist-Leninism, to be a mythology. His point is that there is no final or transcending truth that we humans may discover; there is no body of knowledge or suite of disciplines that will lead us to absolute knowledge. There are only better ways of ordering the environment and of understanding our predicament. He believes that toward that end scientific materialism will be a clear improvement over the religious and political mythologies that now dominate our cultures.

No one interested in evolutionary psychology can afford to miss this book, even though it is twenty-three years old. It is a classic. Anyone interested in human nature (yes, one may profitably generalize about human nature, as long as one understands what a generalization is, and appreciates its limitations) should read this book, one of the most significant ever written on a subject of unparalleled importance.

Let me add my econium for this wonderful book, which received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, and is likely the best introduction into the emergent field of sociobiology (of which E. O. Wilson is progenitor).

The book is deftly, wittily, and elegantly written with great confidence and assuredness. The first half of the book introduces the reader to the promising field of evolutionary psychology, which, for the first time, promises to ground psychology on science rather than ideology. The book rings the death knell to Freud, Jung, pop-psychology, and other pie-in-the-sky notions that have mascaraded as a "human science."

The second half of the book addresses four of the most focal concerns of human nature: Aggression, sex, altruism, and religion, on the basis of sociobiology theory. The emergence of this endeavor begins with genes, evolution, and human enculturation, not with theories about infantilism, phallocentrism, and neuroticism. The topics are sufficiently covered in enough detail to keep the reader's interest and sustain the arguments, but with the intent of being introductory and accessible rather than sallying into the esoteric and academic.

The consequence is a wholly different orientation toward what is meant by "human nature." The concept is no longer the stuff of speculative metaphysics by armchair philosophers and psychologists, but a true science evolving out of the science of evolutionary theory and genetics. The implications are not quasi-scientific, but truly scientific. Humans do indeed have a "nature," and it is based on nature, not in the imaginations of wishful thinkers.

No one, not already exposed to sociobiology, will finish reading this book unaffected for the better. Wilson, the author of "Sociobiology," "Consilience," "The Future of Life," and other enjoyable works, will find a plethora of other authors and books flooding the market with scientific insights into man's true "human nature," including "The Adaptive Mind," "The Moral Animal," "Non-Zero," and "Unto Others."

This hard hitting, thought provoking book should be read by everyone.
The author sides with S.J. Gould that evolution has no goal (no anthropic cosmological principle). Species evolve by natural selection. The brain exists because it promotes survival and multiplication of the genes. He goes even further: the capacities to select particular esthetic judgments and religious beliefs must have arisen by natural selection. He argues that human beings are innately aggressive and fight wars to gain long-term reproductive success.
He hits hard at the interpretation of sexuality by Judaism and Christianity: the sex rules are biological and written by natural selection. In that way, he defends homosexuality.
Facing human nature as it is and evolves, how can we make life better: by the true Promethean spirit of science to liberate man by giving him knowledge and some measure of dominion over himself and his environment.
It will be difficult to refute the strong arguments of the author. He forces us to face the real realities of life and nature. The only solution is knowledge in order that mankind can take the necessary measures to save this planet.
By the way, he sneers at T. Roszak, who didn't find it necessary to replace God by reason; for him it is pure obscurantism.
A great read.

A thorough and scholarly examination of the New Testament which is entirely accessable to the lay reader. Father Brown lucidly sets forth the social, religious, political and historical context of each book without losing sight of the essential Christian message. His approach is an intellectually-challenging counterbalance to the work of the "Jesus Seminar"; he expounds on the development of each New Testament book without challenging its essential, spiritual veracity. Well done, indeed.

The most important thing to say about this book is that you will want to (infact, you will NEED to) read the New Testament to fully understand much of its content. This is not a bad thing: Brown's intent was that you actually sit down and read the bilblical texts, preferably before delving into his commentary! His format is extremely no-nonsense (his frequent abbreviation may infact be the only off-putting aspect of the book), and the "Issues and Concerns" at the end of each chapter encourage dialogue and critical thinking. I have already read many books by other popular religious authors (J.D. Crossan, John Shelby Spong, Elaine Pagels, etc), and was happy to finally get around to Fr. Brown. I am looking forward to reading his other books.

The late Raymond E. Brown was a tremendous scholar and a devout Christian. In all he did, Father Brown carefully applied the tools of critical scholarship while never apologizing for his faith. In a scholastic battlefield too often dominated by extremists on the left and the right, Father Brown was a breath of fresh air who drew fire from both sides.

This Introduction first provides helpful background information about the formation of the New Testament and the social and political world that produced it. Father Brown then carefully analyzes each book of the New Testament with consideration for issues such as who the author was, where the book was written, and who the author's initial audience was. More importantly, each book is then carefully analyzed in light of this information for the meaning it conveyed in the social and historical context in which it was written.

As another reviewer has said, you can't read this book beneficially without also reading the New Testament. But for searching, inquisitive readers who are willng to put in that effort, this book provides a truly informative, intellectually honest introduction to the greatest story ever told.

Mr. Schmelzkopf offers up wit, humor, and optimism to an otherwise serious and debilitating condition that is brain damage. His anecdotes throughout the book are down to earth and proves that it is indeed possible for a person who has had brain surgery to get through the difficult days of therapy and once again lead a normal life. This book is a must read for all patients recovering from brain surgery and their families.

Dick Schmeltzof's very personal book, Brain Damage, is both heartwarming and informative. He treats a very serious subject with humor, wit and compassion. It is difficult to imagine the drastic changes that have occurred in Dick's life since the emergency surgery to remove a tumor on his pituitary gland. But through his carefully constructed narrative, we can "feel" his frustrations and also revel in the incremental -- yet moving forward -- progress that he makes. His is a story of great courage, hope and love; a lesson for Humanity. Thanks to Dick for sharing this moving and insightful story of life after brain surgery. Readers will laugh. They will weep. And finally, they will applaud this incredible human being. Dick demonstrates a real gift for storytelling through this book. Let's hope he delights us with "Brain Damage II".

This book is an outstanding example of an individual's true courage to tackle challenges that most of us cannot imagine. Mr. Schmelzkopf's wonderful sense of humor invites the reader to learn about brain damage and how it effects all areas of an individual's life, as well as their family's lives. His descriptive approach about his cognitive deficits allows the reader to envision a patient's perception of his own environment. Mr. Schmelzkopf's comical, honest, informative style catagorizes his story as a must to read and a difficult to put down book!

No less an eminent man of letters than Mark Twain called Ulysses S. Grant's "Personal Memoirs" "the best [memoirs] of any General's than Caesars." Having now read this outstanding work along with those of Julius Caesar, William T. Sherman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Colin Powell and H. Norman Schwarzkopf, I must agree with Mark Twain's assessment. For sheer honesty, humility, and simple but powerful language, U.S. Grant's memoirs are without peer.

Grant allows the reader to go along with him and live once again his experiences during the Mexican War and American Civil War. He interjects his own judgments and opinions sparingly, yet always honestly. Where he feels he made mistakes, he admits them freely, and his criticisms of his colleagues is always tempered by an obvious attitude of professionalism. The fact that Grant wrote a memoir of such eloquence while dying from cancer makes it all the more powerful a book.

I found this modern library edition especially outstanding. The introductory notes by Caleb Carr and Geoffrey Perret, while brief, are extremely informative. Maps and etchings from the original 1885 Charles Webster & Co. edition are included, as is General Grant's report to Secretary of War Stanton on Civil War operations during 1864-65. This appendix makes fantastic reading by itself!

I highly recommend this outstanding edition to all Civil War and military history enthusiasts. It is simply the best military memoir I've ever read.

Grant's memoirs are a must-read for any serious student of the Civil War. While praise is heaped upon Confederate generals such as Lee and Jackson, Grant's legacy has always been a little more uncertain. His reputation has been associated with allegations of drunkenness, and with an apparent unflinching ability to send men to their slaughter which this book helps to dispel.

Lincoln loved Grant, as he was the first Union commander who seemed willing to fight it out with Lee's army, and who enjoyed any consistent success. When one considers Grant's predecessors at the helm of the Union army, one can understand Lincoln's enthusiasm. You had McClellan, who never read an exaggerated report of the enemy size he didn't believe; "Fighting Joe Hooker", flanked and embarrassed at Chancellorsville; Burnside, who foolishly sent wave after wave of Union soldiers across the Rappahanock to attack an impregnable stone wall at Fredericksburg; and Pope, who was soundly beaten at Manassas. Meanwhile, Grant caught Abe's attention with his successful siege of Vicksburg in the summer of 1863, as Meade was beating Lee at Gettysburg.

Reading Grant's Memoirs is a fascinating experience, as the war, at least that part of it involving Grant, comes to life in the hands of a thoughtful commentator. Grant was obviously there, and he shares informative communications with his inferior officers (such as Sherman) and with the President. Grant sent many men to their doom to be sure, (the Wilderness campaign comes to mind as being especially bloody and ineffective), but overall you get the sense that Grant was respected by his men, who were happy to be marching forward and not backwards after a battle. He restored a sense of pride and accomplishment that was sorely lacking in the Union rank and file. He gave cogent reasons in his memoirs for the actions undertaken, sometimes admitting mistakes in humble fashion, and sometimes explaining why a siege would accomplish the same overall goal without unnecessary bloodshed.

My only regret is that Grant didn't live long enough to write a companion memoir about his presidency, which was clearly outside the scope of this book. Readers who have gotten this far in the Amazon review process are no doubt aware that a broke Grant, stricken with painful throat cancer, wrote out his Memoirs of the Civil War right up until the end of his life to provide financially for his family, finishing the book days before he died. We should all be grateful that he was able to preserve these pages for prosperity, they are truly a model of military memoirs that I consider an extremely rewarding reading experience. When one considers the circumstances in which Grant composed this work, the end result is nothing short of miraculous.

A must read for all Civil War buffs and those even remotely interested in history. The 600+ pages in this book (both volume I and II are included together) articulately spell out the military career of one of the United States' greatest generals. Grant's Memoirs are well-written, thoughtful, insightful, and offer more than a glimpse into the mind of U.S. Grant.

Volume I opens with a heartfelt preface where Grant explains how his diminishing health pushed him to complete this work and "asking no favor but hoping (his remarks) will meet the approval of the reader." They most definitely do. Following the preface, the reader is given a (very) short review of his early childhood, life at West Point, and early Army life. The next one hundred pages are dedicated to the Mexican War followed by his resignation from the military and civilian life in Illinois. The remainder of Volume I and all of Volume II extensively deal with the War Between the States.

I found Volume I (written before Grant realized he was critically ill) to be rich in detail of the various military campaigns (perhaps too detailed) and his ascension through the military ranks, but it is somewhat lacking in personal observations and insights. It even drags at times--but stick with it. The patient reader will not be dissapointed. Volume II hurls the reader into the conflict, reads rapidly, and is rife with Grant's personal observations and insights.

This second volume picks up where the first left off--following Vicksburg to the campaigns in Tennessee to the Battle of the Wilderness to Sherman's March to the Sea to the Battle of Franklin right up to Appomattox and all the events of April and May 1865. These campaigns are told from the commanding general's perspective with great overview and detail. However, what really makes Volume II (and this volume is much more fast paced than the first) special are all the personal observations and insightful (rarely negative and always humble) comments about those Grant served with and against. Grant is thoughtful and displays much about himself as this great book draws to a close. An eloquently written, detailed, first-person account of the Civil War that offers much to those who read it.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

This is a classic in the world of quality assurance. It is fair to call Deming the father, godfather, grandfather and preacher of the quality movement. This book, written in 1986 after he achieved international fame for helping improve quality in Japan, captures the spirit and ideas that spawned a revolution.

The book captures many of the key points in Deming's philosophy:
1) Creating metrics based approaches to management, without falling into a quota system.
2) Differentiating between problems caused by the system and problems outside of the system.
3) Focusing on both doing things correctly, and identifying the right tasks to approach.
4) Introducing a Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle of continuous improvement.

If you look at this list, the book presents a blueprint for many of the so called management revolutions of the subsequent 15 years: Excellence, Re-engineering, Process Management, Systems Thinking. This book really is both a trend setter as well as highly important body of theory. The theory is relevant today, as many management problems today can be addressed by his 14 points of management. (Example: A reliance on inspection is bad - build quality into the process. This is highly relevant to software construction today.)

So are there any knocks?
1) You're left with many imperatives, but sometimes without positive prescriptions. For example: If you don't do annual performance reviews, what do you replace it with to determine who gets promoted?
2) The book can be dry and hard to follow. Sometimes it is written as notes pieced together.
3) Many of the companies that Deming held up as models have fallen on tougher times. It seems that today Quality alone is not enough.

Having said this, it should be required reading for any manager. The theory is good, and the book should spark your thinking.

With my current research interest circling 'Total Quality Management (TQM)', this book came to my attention. Upon reading it, followed by six seminal sessions and a three-day conference with the British Deming Association (BDA) in the UK, I felt totally disgusted with the way the society, in particular people who call themselves 'Quality Consultants' preach the gospel of the term 'Quality'. This book and BDA exposed to my then propagated mind, the true meaning of 'Quality'. Many organisations and academic institutions tend to pervertise and manipulate the term for marketing and other strategic purposes which is despicable... as most societies around the world will inevitably embrace the stigma-ridden myth to the term.

Deming highlights the essential roots to performance in his now famous 14 pts. for management. He attested that management is the key that allows quality improvement to occur within organisations and stated that the function of management is not supervision but leadership; which must work on sources of improvement, the intent on quality of product and service and on the translation of that intent into design and actual product.

When Deming went over to Japan after the Second World War to assist in the restoration of the Japanese economy, he conducted an empirical prognosis on the general economic situation using an SPC method which he had perfected while leading the American census. Deming then met up with 80% of the country's leaders and told them that the only way to revive their economy was to enhance their competitiveness in the international market by focusing on quality productions via stringent manufacturing standards. Most Japanese leaders scorned at Deming's idea and demanded for him to feel the reality of their situations then. However, the leaders heeded Deming's advice in the end, as they felt that "... having lost all, they have got nothing else to lose."

Forty years later, Japan became an international economic giant with an economy twice the size of all other East-Asian economies combined, including China. Her current GDP value is the second highest in the world after the USA's, despite a much smaller national population. Japan's financial prowess remains stable despite the current economic slump in Asia, as President Clinton said in Shanghai (1998),

"We (America) cannot see growth restored in Asia until it is restored in Japan."

This book is a superb guide not only to prodigal management principles, but also Deming's personal philosophies regarding life and effective leadership. Although considered an essential read personally, I would recommend to those who are new to Deming's ideas to check out "The New Economics", Deming's last book prior to his death in 1993, as an actual managerial guide, as it will be easier and more effective for them to realise.

When I first saw this book a few years ago at a friend's house I never imagined that I would enjoy reading it. However, somehow my opinion changed recently while I was looking for a good book about manufacturing quality control. This book agrees with all that I believed to be true based on my limited manufacturing experience--the plant worker is very rarely to blame for quality problems, rather problems are usually the result of system issues.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and couldn't put it down. It is a great overview of quality control methods and control charts. I also have Mary Walton's "The Deming Management Method", but I would strongly recommend to just read Deming's masterpiece.