:::2020 Vision::: Stan Davis and Bill Davidson Simon & Schuster (c) 1991 ISBN 0-671-73237-4 I just finished the book last week, and I think I want to read it again already. There are so many new ideas and concepts that it's hard for me to really remember them. Besides, this new economy that the book is about is such a different way of thinking for me that it's not just a matter of incorporating some new suggestions into the same mindset that I've always had -- 2020 Vision is really about looking at business and management in a whole new way; the mindset itself is different. When I read phrases like "the new economy," or "informationalize your business," I'm usually a more than a little skeptical. "Yeah, right," I used to think all this talk about an "information economy" was about looking up answers to questions and trying to sell each other last week's baseball scores. I no longer think so. I took the book home largely because one of the promotional blurbs on the back cover was by Tom Peters, who said "If Stan Davis' Future Perfect was the 'book of the decade' for the '80s (and I think it was), then his and Bill Davidson's 2020 Vision may well be the 'book of the '90s.' 2020 Vision is not for the faint of heart. It is a provocative masterpiece that puts almost all other 'futurist' treatises to shame." Well! How could I resist a challenge like that? Besides, I read Future Perfect back in the '80s, and it was indeed brilliant. I'd have to agree with Tom Peters about Davis and Davidson's book. Not only did I begin to understand that we really are in the midst of a new economy -- and thus a new era of mankind's social relationships, thinking and enterprise -- but even as I was reading through the chapters my mind began to be crowded with all sorts of new ideas not just for improvements in the way I'm already doing business, but whole new businesses! Now, how many books have you read lately that both stimulate the imagination and suggest immediately practical solutions for everyday problems, all at once? Practical and exciting, 2020 Vision has important lessons for virtually every business, not just those we may first think of when things "high tech" or "computerized" are mentioned. Officers of large corporations as well as one-person home-based business-people will all be doing themselves, their customers, and their businesses a tremendous favor by reading this important and entertaining book.

I bought this book for my History course and its absolutely Great ! All the main points have been neatly written on the side, which makes reading very easy. If you are purchasing this book, you may also want to buy the Study guide which comes along with it.

This book lets you know all the concepts just by reading it through. I bought it for the history class and this is by far the best book i've ever read in the classes.

Stephen Ambrose is an amazingly prolific writer of history. I cannot speak about his other books, as I have not read them. This book, however, is simply a regurgitation of old research trying to be unique by juxtaposing the lives of the two men most associated with the Indian Wars. The only thing parallel in these two lives is the time period in which they lived. Anything else is a stretch.

Indeed the underlying premise that these were two great warriors destined to meet on the field of battle is the stuff that drama, not real history, is made of. By all accounts the Indians didn't even know Custer was there until the fighting was over, and while Crazy Horse was known as a great warrior amongst his people, there were many respected warriors on the field that day. Crazy Horse was, at most, a first among equals.

Indeed, in trying to popularize his history, Ambrose makes the common mistake of portraying Crazy Horse as a general leading his troops into battle. Phrases like "Crazy Horse stuck to his command post," may help to bring the battle to life for WWII veterans, but it is not a truly accurate rendering of how Indians fought.

Ambose does do a good job in the first two chapters of showing the vast differences in the cultures these to men grew up in. For this I give the book two stars. It's also not a bad introduction for someone who has no previous knowledge of the topic. Only, however, if it encourages them to go on to read better and more accurate works.

It's been years since I read this book, but it has stayed with me. Beyond resparking an interest in American frontier history that began in childhood, it also gave me a much more balanced view of Crazy Horse and especially Custer than I had before. Ambrose, as in his books about Lewis and Clark, WWII, and the building of the transcontinental railroad, has the ability to make you feel that you are living the history as you are reading. Some have disparaged this as "popularizing history", but I say it is a gift. To quote David McCullough, another fine historian and biographer, "There is only one secret to writing and teaching history. Tell stories." Why do you suppose that students today, even those at our finest universities are largely ignorant of history? It's either not required at all or it's taught as a compendium of names, places, and dates in a way that's so deathly dull that only the most self motivated student who is willing to do extra reading and research on his or her own would find it interesting. I've gotten way off the subject here, and for that I apologize. But that comment about "popularizing history" got to me.

To get back to "Crazy Horse and Custer", it's a very fine book. The only problem I had with it is that in harping about the U.S. government's failed, if halfhearted, effort at genocide and his assertion that Native Americans were simply in the way of inevitable western expansion, Ambrose fails to differentiate between physical and cultural genocide. The physical genocide obviously failed, but cultural genocide very nearly succeeded.

Despite that caveat, if you are interested in the history of the Indian wars and especially the history of these two very different and yet remarkably similar men, "Crazy Horse and Custer" is is a must read.

I enjoyed Ambrose's approach of following the lives of natural leaders in different cultures. It was interesting the see how each culture, Americans in the late 1800s and American Indians, picked their leaders. The research is thicker on Custer, due to the vastly more complete written record. The history of Crazy Horse is based more on oral history of events long since passed. Pay no attention to reviewers that say this is not "the historical book on Custer." A book does not have to be a 1200 page tome to be a great book. Ambrose makes history vibrant and meaningful, a trait lost on most academic historians.