do you have any book store in p.r.china? since i can't remit money abroad. but in china, i can do so. tks

One of the best books I've ever read. Extremely useful and updated. Strongly recommended.

This book is a decent one for your library shelf. It includes a fair variety of articles, quite often featuring widely known names in the CI field. The idea of "proven" and "strategies" may be a bit misleading however, as some of these so-caled proven strategies were really philosphies, tactics or concepts that worked for a short time but were shown to be difficult to sustain. Witness the recent public difficulties at Procter & Gamble or Daimler Benz for example and you'll understand this.

For those people who read or have seen the CI Review, you'll recognize that these chapters first appeared as articles in that venue. Some of the chapters are now several years old, stale, and the individuals, departments or companies involved have undergone major shifts in their approaches to CI and to the topics of these articles. I should note that this doesn't mean that the information is invalid, indeed, it is helpful more often than not. However, "proven" strategies are enduring... some of the ones highlighted here were "practiced" for sure, but "proven" may be a bit of a marketing stretch. I'd still recommend this book to those individuals new to the field, and those who haven't accessed this material before in its other forms.

As with any anthology, some of the contributions are better than others. But the best case studies in this collection are of real value. In particular, I'd point to the case studies from Shell and other companies that describe how corporate intranets can be used to both collect competitive information from within your firm (sales reps, etc.) and then to make it availalbe firmwide, so that no one gets "blindsided." Any company that's not doing this doesn't understand, as one of the chapters puts it, the overriding importance of CI/Knowledge Management convergence.

I was also amazed by how forthright some of the contributors were, expecially the description of the organizational CI structures at firms such as P&G, Xerox and IBM. I don't know why they're sharing this, but these descriptions are worth the price of the book. Not that you'd want to copy them exactly, but it's vital to know how others organize their efforts in this regard.

And even the more "philosophical" contributions, include Robert Galvin's piece on CI at Motorola, were helpful.

No, it's not a really "how to" book, but it does reveal just how important CI now is to companies in the know, and why others should get onboard.

The Roger Touhy case has always fascinated me. I once firmly believed--back in my "armchair expert" days--in the innocence of Roger Touhy of the alleged Factor kidnapping, though, like author Tuohy, I was also skeptical of Touhy's own book The Stolen Years, which presented Roger as basically an "innocent bootlegger" rather than a real gangster. Mind you, I haven't necessarily changed my mind on this. Touhy may very well have been framed. It's just that there has always been a lot of evidence both for and against a frameup. Such as the wiretapped conversations between members of Touhy's gang and Jake "The Barber" Factor after Jake's release, threatening to kidnap him again unless further ransom was paid. Author Tuohy--no relation to Roger--neatly explains this by revealing that members of Touhy's gang were involved in the frameup. It's very believable but the credibility of the book is not enhanced by its numerous factual errors. Most deal with characters only marginally associated with the case but still undermine the book. Alvin Karpis was never a labor slugger for Capone. He was a bank robber and kidnapper whose only motivation to become involved in the Hamm kidnapping was pure profit. Karpis had no interest in framing Touhy for the Hamm job and certainly nothing to do with the Factor case. Karpis was, in fact, a friend of the Touhy gang and they had a mutual friend in "Baby Face" Nelson, whom Karpis introduced into the Dillinger gang. Melvin Purvis, who arrested Touhy for the Hamm job, which Touhy was subsequently acquitted of, was probably just another innocent dupe. Attached to the Chicago FBI office at the time was an Illinois highway patrolman, a so-called expert on the local underworld who seems to have actually been a double agent for Capone. It is curious that author Tuohy never stumbled upon this but he should have, as this was probably the "informant" who misdirected Purvis in Touhy's direction. Instead, the author implies that Purvis was part of the frameup, stating, erroneously, that Purvis knew through informants that Karpis had engineered the Hamm kidnapping. Purvis had no knowledge of this at the time. The FBI did not learn of the Barker-Karpis gang's involvement in the Hamm case until the following year, when they first heard of it from dying Dillinger gangster Eddie Green. The information on Gus Winkler (true name Winkeler) is also erroneous. Winkler was arrested for a million-dollar Lincoln, Nebraska bank robbery but he did not sell out his accomplices to beat to the rap. In fact, he was as innocent of this robbery as Touhy was of the Hamm and (probably) Factor kidnappings. Winkler simply bought back the stolen bonds from the actual robbers and returned them, beating the rap this way. None of the actual Lincoln bank robbers went to prison, through information from Winkler or any other way. No one--at least no one who's talking--knows why Winkler was killed but some evidence suggests it was just Frank Nitti consolidating his hold on the Capone empire by eliminating potential rivals, another of whom was North Side gangster Ted Newberry, a mutual friend of Touhy and Winkler. The connections of Touhy and Newberry to Mayor Cermak are well known but the case for Capone involvement in Cermak's murder, as presented here and elsewhere, is highly speculative at best. Personally, like many other researchers, I doubt that Capone or Nitti would have used a loser like Zangara for a hitman, or to have been stupid enough to have staged the assassination of Cermak while he was meeting the President-elect. Getting back to Touhy himself, the author does make a good case for Roger's innocence of kidnapping but his research strayed too far into other areas of gangster history in which his expertise is less than certain. Some source notes would have helped but the obvious errors detract from the author's equally obvious research. Still, someone--the Outfit? Jake the Barber? or both?--wanted Touhy out of the way in 1959. This book does go a long way toward explaining that. Despite its obvious faults, this book is a worthwhile addition to any gangster aficionado's library.

Author John Tuohy, who has a similar spelling of the last name to his subject Roger, but apparently no relation, has provided us with an interesting story of northwest Chicago beer baron Roger Touhy who was in competition with Al Capone during Capone's heyday. Touhy appeared to be winning the battle since Mayor Anton Cermak was deporting a number of Capone's cronies. However, the mob hit, according to the author, on Mayor Cermak in Miami, Florida, by Giuseppe Zangara following a speech by President-elect Roosevelt, put an end to the harrassment of Capone's cronies. The author details the staged "kidnapping" of Jake "the Barber" Factor who did this to avoid being deported to England and facing a prison sentence there for stock swindling, with Touhy having his rights violated and sent to prison for 25 years for the kidnapping that never happened. Factor and other Chicago mobsters were making a lot of money with the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas when they got word that Touhy was to be parolled and planned to write his life story. The mob, not wanting this, decided Touhy had to be eliminated. Touhy was murdered by hit men in 1959, 28 days after gaining his freedom. Jake Factor had also spent time in prison in the United States for a whiskey swindle involving 300 victims in 12 states. Two days before Factor was to be deported to England to face prison for the stock swindle President Kennedy granted Factor a full Presidential Pardon after Factor's contribution to the Bay of Pigs fund. President Kennedy, the author notes, issued 472 pardons (about half questionable) more than any president before or since.

There are a number of books on Capone and the Chicago mob. This book takes a look at an overlooked beer baron from that time period, Roger Touhy. It is a very worthwhile read and one that will hold your interest.

This book would have been a lot more helpful in my opinion if it had given more real advice rather than focusing on case studies. At times you feel that the author intended this book to be a textbook for psych students. At other times you feel that the author is using this book to air feelings he had about past clients and past relationships. That's all fine and good, but the title leads one to think that this is a book about personal awareness and healing, and it's not.

This much-needed book is priceless for someone who's recovering from a toxic relationship, or trying to avoid having one. The author writes in a very down-to-earth style, and he frequently lets readers know about his own personal "Zelda" experiences. Although toxic relationships are romanticized by books, TV shows, movies, etc...those who have ever been in one know that they're anything but romantic. There is nothing loving about toxicity. The author stumbled upon the concept of this book after being involved in a toxic relationship, and being reminded by a colleague of Zelda & Scott Fitzgerald's lethal relationship and its similarities to his own. It's obvious that this book was a true labor of love and self-discovery for the author, and God bless him for using his experiences as a mate, counselor, observer, and recovering affliction addict to help others.

Does tracking in our public schools isolate children, keeping them from reaching their potential? How do first generation, black immigrants handle tracking? These are some of the questions R. Patrick Solomon attempts to answer in his ground breaking book, Black Resistance in High School.

Useing multicultural education theory from one of the pioneers, John U. Ogbu, Salomon shows how first generation West Indies immigrants rebel against school authority in Toronto Canada. Salomon's style of ethnographic writing combined with controversial theory make for an eye opening read.

Black Resistance in High School is a must for every student of education and anthropology.

Tassoni and Thelin (and the contributors) should be commended for their courage in challenging the dominant Horatio Algerian paradigm of celebrating only success and shoving to the margins the ways in which the rest of us blunder. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in a serious examination of resistance theory, where we have gone wrong and with some hints on where we might go right. Read this. If you don't, you're operating in the half-blind hero-narrative myth characteristics of academics.

John Marshall Tanner is the likeable protagonist in this entertaining book. Tanner is a former lawyer who operates in a laid back fashion and is a private detective mostly by default.BOOK CASE is about fraud and murder. It also deals with the way in which some people can get ensnared by the lure of an elite private school.

In this groundbreaking work, Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens establish not only a strong correlation between capitalist development and democracy, but also a convincing causal mechanism by which this development can bring about democracy. The authors choose to focus on a relative class power model in their account of democracy: capitalist development initiates a profound shift in the class structure and the relative power of each class. According to the authors, in a pre-capitalist society the subordinate classes are most likely to support a transition demoracy because they essentially have nothing to lose and everything to gain. They are opposed in this respect by the landowning aristocracy, the dominant class in pre-industrial society and the class that has everything to lose in a democratization of the political system. Thus, the strenghtening of the subordinate (working) class brought about by industrialization bodes well for democracy. Capitalism also brings about an entirely new player--the middle class--that, when it allies with the interests of subordinate classes, intensifies the push for democracy. The analysis of social actors is joined by an analysis of social structure. That is, Rueschemeyer, et al believe that a balance between the state's power and the power of social actors must be established in order for democracy to become a possibility. A strong state counters the power of the elites while a strong landowning class prevents a totalitarian state from forming. The key to creating this balance is the development of a strong civil society between these two forces. Autonomous of both the government and the class system, civil society consists in the aggregation of social actors in various organizations (such as community-based or religious groups and trade unions). Capitalist development frees people from their preoccupation with subsistence agriculture, allowing them to join in such associations and increasing thier power in voicing their collective interests. The most significant contribution of this account is the reassertion of individual agency in the process of democracy, a concept that is often ignored in purely structural accounts of democratization.

Seddon's book is great because it introduces the reader to systems thinking and its application to quality management. The Vanguard Standards which is a re-write of the ISO9001 standard using systems thinking is a must read companion. It can be downloaded free.

Seddon questions the wisdom of standardising procedures and processes. He gives many many examples of how standardisation in fact leads to customer dissatisfaction. It is more important to understand variation and to structure processes around such understanding.

My name is Jack and I am a 7 year old first grader. This book is the first Jigsaw Jones mystery I have read. The mystery solver's nickname is Jigsaw. His nickname is Jigsaw because he solves mysteries like puzzles. I like the book because the mystery is cool. I like it that the kids are about the same age as me. These books are good for active readers.