Still very relevant and important read for anyone in professional services. I particularly like the following chapters:
A Question of Balance:
Quality Work Doesn't Mean Quality Service
The Importance of Scheduling

There's so much in this book, well recommended.

I devoured this book when it first appeared almost ten years ago, and still turn to it from time to time because it is still the best thing out there on its topic. Maister considers a number of major issues within professional service firms (such as firm positioning, type of work, recruiting, training, up-or-out promotion, partner compensation, coaching, and self-development) and within each one presents a lucid exegesis that is at the same time profound and simple. His analysis rivals Stephen Covey's "7 Habits" in its depth and elegance, and, like Covey, Maister makes his discoveries more accessible by frequently including a personal side to them.

Professionals working in large law firms, accounting firms, architecture firms or consultancies will immediately find both themselves and their firms within this book. They may not always like what they see, as Maister discusses some of the hard choices that are required by the traditional, meritocracy-based firm model. Notably, Maister illustrates clearly why much of the heartache within such firms comes from failing to make such choices and trying to be too many (inconsistent) things at once.

Maister does not spend a lot of time trying to defend the traditional merit-based, up-or-out, partner/associate model of professional service firms, nor does he insist that we pledge allegiance to that model. He is well aware of, and points out, the hazards and potential injustices of that model. It is clear, however, that whatever its faults, Maister believes it is the best model we have right now, and that his job is to help people make it work as best they can. This book represents a giant step in that direction, and should be required reading for anyone in a position to influence management at a professional service firm.

I've read a lot of books on leadership, management and selling - this is one of a select few that I find myself referring back to frequently since I first read it 5 years ago. I just logged on to buy a new copy - I've loaned out my old one again and forget who has it. The chapters on selling professional services are particularly strong, because Maister recommends dignified, professional approaches to client development. I personally practice ideas like 'marketing from the inside' and it's helped me help a lot of people - and make a lot of money in the process.

This is certainly the best book I have ever read in my life! This is Jordan Cray's best book. It provides a great deal of suspense and this is the first book that I actually wouldn't let go of. Anybody who loves the internet will love this book! If you haven't read it, GET IT!

My mom got me this book about 2 years ago and I thought it looked really stupid. One night not to long ago I was so bored and just wanted to read something so I got the book out and started to read it. I couldn't put it down! I read it in 2 nights and now I love the series. Anyone who likes computers would love this series. Just read the book and you'll see what I mean!

When Randy takes his computer to Maya and then gets it back, I knew somthing was going to be wrong. This is the first book of the series that I've read, and I want to read them all!!!! I would recommend this book to everyone who likes the internet and who likes to read.

If you want to know whether COM is worth reading more about, start with this book. It is a high level overview that even a manager can read (and think he/she understands)!

That being said, keep away from non-programmers, they will get the impression that COM/OLE is soooo simple that anybody can do it. 8)

If you are interested in COM this is a must read. Clear, easy to follow, accurate explanation of the concepts. If you are interested in code look at Don Box "Essential COM" book, but read this one first.

*If you want to establish a good foundation first, I recommend reading this book before reading other COM books (and getting confused^_^). *This book is very easy to understand and enjoyable to read. However, it is just an introduction, and only contains some snippets. I strongly recommend "Inside COM" for further study. *DON'T read "Essential COM" unless you have finished "Inside COM".

Miss Spider's Tea Party: The Counting Book, is a favorite of my 10 month old. I have been reading it to her since she was 6 months old. It is by far her favorite among all of her board books. She is captivated by the vivid art work and loves the rhythm of the story. I was so pleased with it that I bought it for my 2 year old niece. It has become her favorite. The board book stands up to wear and tear. I highly recommend this book all the way around!

I purchased this book a year ago for my then 18 month old niece and it is her favorite book. The illustrations are vivid and the characters jump off the pages.At two and a half, she's learned to count as well as identify colors. It is a well worn and loved book. Not only does she love it but I love reading it to her as well. I will continue to gift other toddlers with this gem!!DA Lancaster,Pa

My son is only four months old, however, this book, with all of the wonderful illustrations and colors, encourages him to look from side-to-side. He smiles and seems to delight with the flow of words, as well as the illustrations. This is the ONLY book that he looks at with such interest. I hope that the other "Miss Spider" books are converted to the same type of board book soon. I believe that it is never too early to introduce a child to loving character that they may grow with.

It is impossible to say anything about David Halberstam's books without first saying how influential his journalism has been to an entire generation of journalists in the United States and overseas. When I was a young news clerk at The New York Times a long time ago, I read Halberstam's masterly "The Best and The Brightest," and I wrote him a note applauding his detailed research, the flow of his narrative, and the sheer sweep of his story. To my surprise, he responded promptly; it is a note that I still treasure -- just as I treasure every book he has written since. "The Children" shows Halberstam at the peak of his writing ability. He recreates the human environment of the frenetic years of the civil rights struggles, telling the extraordinary stories of some of heralded and unheralded players in a manner that is both gripping and provocative. The reader shouldn't be daunted by the length of this book (800 pages) because there isn't a single section that flags. "The Children" is certain to become a landmark book. It deepens our understanding of a traumatic period in American history, and illustrates vividly that ultimately all social forces and causes are shaped by individual men and women -- in this case people who battled racism and the ever-present antagonism of foes determined not to yield ground. "The Children" dramatizes the triumph of goodness; it is definitely a triumph of a genre that might be called histojournalism. It is a superb book by a towering writer of great sensitivity and skill.

David Halbestam's monumental book, the children, is a hymn of praise to a remarkable group of young people who did much, perhaps most, of the heavy lifting of the civil rights movement. But it is also the story of how one man, James Lawson, influenced a movement and changed a nation. There are many heroes portrayed in Halberstam's book, but perhaps the one indispensable person in the success of the civil rights movement was not Martin Luther King, Jr., but James Lawson. This is not to diminish or belittle the contributions of King, for what more can a man give than his life. But even Halberstam doesn't seem to recognize that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 might never have come about had it not been for the remarkable acheivement of James Lawson in attracting and training the first group of young, tremendously dedicated non-violent protesters in Nashville in 1959 and 1960. This is one of the most inspirational books I have ever read, and while, as several of the reviewers have already noted, the book could have done with some paring of redundancies, if you want a story filled with heroes and heroines, with light overcoming darkness and the good guys winning, this is your book. It should be required reading for every young person in America. James Lawson, jailbird, "draft dodger" and the ultimate "outside agitator," has lived a life of consequence and significance that most of us can only dream about. The remarkable thing is that he found other young people who wished to live lives equally challenging. Human beings, if they are lucky, are given only a few rare opprotunities in their lives to make a real and great impact on their world. Lawson, Nash, LaFayette, Bevel, Powell, Brown, Johnson and the wonderous John Lewis among many others, seized their opportunity, and made life better for not only millions of Black folk held hostage to racism and ignorance, but for millions of their white oppressors as well. The great tragedy is that as the Movement entered its period of greatest success, it was, like the Russian Revolution, seized by some of the most radical elements in what had been the fringes of the movement. And we lost Martin Luther King, Jr., the most effective voice of the nation's conscience.

David Halberstam, as always, tells the whole story of events in history of which too little is known. He brilliantly details the lives and experiences of the front-line soldiers in the civil rights movement--the men and women (actually boys and girls...hence the name of the book) who had the courage to risk their lives to attain well-deserved and historically denied rights. Prior to this work, historians focused on King and his associates. I prefer the perspective and approach of Halberstam.

The reader becomes engrossed in the lives of the people. Halberstam lets us in on their organization, their disagreements, affairs, loves, families, fears, hopes, failures and successes. Most amazingly, he contrasts the children's reaction to racism with that of their parents. The younger generation's frontal assault on the segregationist strongholds is truly amazing. The stories of the freedom riders is engrossing.

Not Halberstam's best book (that would be the Fifties) but pretty darn close.

...it gives a good story and through history of the life of Dr. Bruce Banner, his green alter-ego, and the woman who loves him, Betty Ross Banner. The story of the Banners trying to live a normal life while on the run from the military makes for good reading and is perhaps the best Hulk story ever written.

If all you know about the Hulk is what you saw on TV - on any of the cartoons or on the old Bill Bixby show - forget everything and start over here. Peter David, who reinvented the Hulk for Marvel Comics prior to writing this book, crafts a heartwrenching story about a man cursed to see his own worst angel in the mirror every day, the owman who loves him, and the evil that may lurk within both his mind and his DNA.

If you've read PAD's Trek novels, try this. It's even better than those, as he takes a character he has made his own and makes him incredible. And after this, you'll never thing of the Hulk and Lou Ferrigno in the same sentence again.

This is the only book I have ever bought, then read, then only minutes after putting the book down, picked it up and read it - AGAIN! I've read it three times now, and have to say that it is the best Hulk story out there. And this from a guy who has almost 300 issues of the comic series, including the entire Peter David run. Thank you Mr. David.

Motel of the Mysteries is an about-face for David Macaulay, whose previous books educated readers about fascinating architectural achievements. Motel is a totally different story-line. What remains the same are his illustrations - pen and ink demonstrations of meticulous obsession. Works like Cathedral and Pyramid display the intricacies of history's architectural marvels in astonishing detail. The cover of Cathedral alone is a spectacle. Motel achieves the same level of elaborateness but throws in a monkey wrench with an outrageous story of our civilization's abrupt demise and its discovery thousands of years later.
The illustrations add a witty visual flair to the laugh-out-loud storyline. The language, intended for upper elementary to adult ages, will probably leave younger readers confused, because the humor is above them, and often too advanced. This can make the story funnier in some places, such as an ice bucket being dubbed the Internal Component Enclosure.
The book is as fictional as books can get. The story takes place in 4022 and only in Motel of the Mysteries could a woman possibly believe a toilet seat is a ceremonial headdress worn by the ancient people of Usa.
In the distant future, America has been dead and gone for thousands of years, and historians and paleontologists search frantically for remnants of the ancient civilization Usa (get it?). Howard Carson, an amateur at best, and associate Harriet Burton discover a 'burial tomb' of the Usa people. What they really discovered was a late 1900s motel. No suspense, nothing that really defines a story, just the hilarious commentary of stumbling upon this motel.
The "Treasures" section explains in full detail the ceremonial items used in Usa burials. The wacky, absolutely outrageous functions given to each item (such as the toilet seat passed off as a headdress) keep the reader glued until the last page.
Macaulay's style is totally unique. Not only is he far more amusing than most authors, he uses his illustrations to weave his knowledge of architecture into the story. The entire book is something of a spoof on historians today. Maybe the pharoahs of Egypt were really just street peddlers!

Recently, I have come across one of the books that I had a whille back and I was really excited to read it. The book is called Motel of the Mysteries and is written by David MacAulay.

In this book the story starts in the present where the whole intire Northern American Continent is covered with an avalance of junk mail. Instantly killing everyone, there is not much known about the 'Yanks' from then on. That is untill the year 4022 where an amateur archeologist finds himself at the entrance of an ancient 'Usa' burial site.

This book is interesting to read because the reader is left to wonder how much do the 'experts' of today really understand about the ancient civilizations. It is a very cute book and isn't that hard to read so a young reader could enjoy it as well as an older one. Overall I think Motel of the Mysteries is a funny book and should be read by anyone interested in history and humor.

- Cole

Motel of the Mysteries is simply one of the funniest books I have ever seen. And "seen" is the word, as the joy is in the illustrations. A parody of archaeologists' tendency to declare what we "know" about past civilizations based on their artifacts, the book presents the unearthing of a nondescript motel two thousand years after the sudden collapse of Western civilization. The fun is in the labeling of the various elements discovered: a showercap becomes a ceremonial death cap, a dinner tray an offering to the gods, a toilet seat a piece of sacred religious neckwear. Macaulay makes his point and has fun doing it. I pick up this book again and again whenever I'm in the mood for an intelligent chuckle.

Having just finished reading it for the third time, I believe that Cancer Ward is a very fine novel, rich at many levels: in its depiction of Soviet provincial society in 1955, a poor society just emerging from Stalinism; in its portrayal of many separate characters (doctors, nurses, patients, hospital workers) in that society, many of whose lives have been permanently damaged by the terror and the GULAG, but in different ways; and, as I know from personal experience, in its depiction of the isolated world of the cancer patient, from which the rest of society is seen dimly, as though through dirty glass. In spite of all medical progress, the basics of this world have not changed much in 50 years: the core treatments are still surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, and the side effects both long and short term can still be brutal.

The ending of the book will disappoint those who want a happy ending, or just an ending with all the loose ends tied up. In real life, though, loose ends usually stay loose. My thought is that Solzhenitshyn intended the reader to understand that for the characters and the society who are so damaged by the past there can be no happy endings; the best they can hope for is to continue from day to day, grasping at whatever happiness briefly comes their way.

Cancer Ward is often overshadowed by its predecessor, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and its successor, the immense memoir, The Gulag Archipelago. While the worldly impact of those two works is perhaps greater, the aesthetic power of Cancer Ward is stronger than both of those works. The story is poignant and powerful, reaching out and probing deeply into the essential questions that are never answered by not only Soviet society, but western culture as a whole. The religious message that emerges is stunning and unique, recalling the works of Dostoyevsky. Overall, this is an excellent book, and any reader who enjoyed One Day or Gulag will be blown away by this work.

I read Len Feders review and I was so horrified that I had to write something myself. Forget the politics, its a book! It's a great story and it is a story about choices, real choices like we face in real life, not fairytale endings like Len was seeking. Forget bad guy good guy stuff - all the patients in the cancer ward face death and their pasts are irrelevant. As the poem says -scepter and crown are equal made with poor and crooked scythe and spade (Death the Leveller). What distinguishes this book is the ending where Kostoglotof walks out of hospital to view the world with hope and to live each day for what it is, as each of us should live every day of our lives. We all die - cancer or not - and what is important is not that we live but how we live. Forget the politics -read this as a book about people - just ordinary people dying in a cancer ward.

The story of how David Wilkerson came to found Teen Challenge should be a must read for anyone who follows Jesus Christ. The Cross and the Switchblade describes how Wilkerson put feet on his faith that took him from rural Pennsylvania to the streets of New York City. It's the story of how a pastor followed the leading of the Holy Spirit and reached out to minister to people with whom the churches would not associate.

Wilkerson describes in his book how essential it is to meet the unloved where they are, rather than waiting for them to show up in church all dressed up and ready to worship within the ranks of the clean and respectable. He also rightly emphasizes the importance of follow up, how one can't just expect to go out and distribute tracts or preach from street corners without also developing real, loving relationships with people and ministering to their needs, both spiritually and physically.

Now that Teen Challenge International has grown to over 200 centers around the world, it is interesting to note that the struggle in recovery ministry continues to be much the same: It's extremely difficult to get people to reach out in love to those who have never been loved, and it's nearly impossible to get church members to venture outside their doors to love their neighbors as they love themselves.

I praise God for Rev. Wilkerson and the way that he listened to God and ventured out in faith. I thank him for sharing the story of his work.

A powerful book that will send God-bumps down your spine! Even if you are not a fan of David Wilkerson's later writings, this book is truly a God send. Read this book if you want to learn of the power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of others.

What a tremendous message this book has to give. Miracles happen right in the worst parts of New York, away from the glamourous bits, right in the middle of the hard, the tough, the smelly and the nasty - and it actually keeps on happening.

These days, so much has changed. A local pentecostal preacher once told me that he went to Leeds one Saturday; that he was so disgusted by the beggars, and used to see the same ones all the time, how awful that they should always be there; and once he got real close up to one, who was (from what he told me) probably very weak, maybe even dying, lying on the ground, got about six inches away from their ear, and shouted at the top of his voice, "GET A JOB!!!"

Stand this in contrast with the Wilkerson man. This guy, realizing that the zonkos and beggars know that they're sinners, possibly scarcely realizing anything else at all, goes and gives them a bed for the night - feeds them - gives them a bath and warm clothes. The tells them that God knows them and has already fixed up a plan for them - that to the God who made the sun and the outer planets, THEY matter - "whosoever will" can come and drink from the waters of life, that they can repent, and be made blameless before the king of kings.

[Life isn't cheap to this man.]

Then the guy fixes up this organisation called "teen challenge", held together by almost no money at all, but lots of prayer, who pulls loads of dropouts and folks who are very nearly dead from all over the place and stands them on the the higher ground...

Man, this book is so good. I know that these days, many of the big churches... (I used to be in Perth, Western Australia) and there was this huge church near to the Casino. The car park was full of BMWs, and all the evidence was that the church was really inwards looking, far too concerned with "signs and wonders" to remember about the plan of Salvation at all. So much for the lost, no place for them. When I went to Yorkshire, I was amazed how the church had similarly split along these lines - those who preached the gospel, the same one as David Wilkerson preached - to the lost sheep - (go and READ this, will you) and those who prayed for (and maybe got) bigger houses, fatter share options, sports cars, foreign holidays, etc. The contrast is huge.

Read this book and find out what the cost of discipleship to Christ really means - how many days and nights of prayer it really takes to move those mountains - and what faith is REALLY about. And the failures, when Sonny does not come back, and all the disappointments when it doesn't seem to go to plan and they're just about to get kicked out of the building...

I was brought up with this book, and as far as I can remember, I have worn out probably six copies. Time I got myself a new one....

Invariably at or near the top of any list of serious titles on poker, this book is the leading work on poker theory. Since virtually every dedicated player has read it, to play without reading it is to put yourself at a disadvantage. Sklansky focuses on the math of poker--how to calculate odds, pot odds, reverse implied pot odds, etc. It's not a fun read; it reminded me of some of the college textbooks I dreaded, but it rewards hard work with a new depth of insight that will make you a smarter, more insightful player. It deserves five stars but I gave it four because it can be so dreary. No colorful stories of how so-and-so went all in with a pair of fours only to [take out a set on the River, etc. Sklansky is so professorial in tone it's hard to imagine him at smoky poker table betting the farm. And in truth, he's more noted as a theoretician than a player. But if you want to play poker for serious stakes, this book is required reading.

If everybody who plays poker were to buy and study this book, I would have a hard time making money at the poker table. I want you fish to remain ignorant of pot odds, effective odds, implied odds, correct bluffing frequency, semi-bluffing, reading cards, and the other topics covered in this book. How am I going to earn money if you know the same things about poker that I do, thanks to Sklansky?

So, skip this book and just plunk yourself down at my table. Oh...and bring lots of cash.

I have read this book so many times that I could probably recite it word for word. Sklansky has written a must-have classic for the poker world. This book is all solid theory. The examples cover Hold 'Em, 7-Stud, Razz and everything in between. of all the poker books I have studied, none have made an impact on my game like Theory of Poker. BUY THIS BOOK!