"Impostors" was a pleasant surprise. A refreshing change from the malarkey found in a lot of today's business titles. I was entertained, challenged and surprised at how many good ideas there were for the taking.

After a slow start, the pace and interest level accelerated rapidly. The thing I enjoyed most was the book read like a novel rather than a technical business publication. Koch's on the road experiences covered a full spectrum, and I felt challenged to come up with answers as to how I might handle some of the real life situations presented. This book will force you to think and to take a position. That's why I liked it so much.

As a 20 year HR professional I'm very confident in my HR knowledge and abilities, and I make it a priority to keep current. Initially I wasn't interested in this title but I heard positive things about it. Now, I wish I had read it sooner. In my opinion, this is must reading for all HR professionals. You may not agree with Koch's direct and no nonsense approach but you'll be hard pressed to find fault in his documented programs and logic. If you're interested in making HR improvements in your organization, read this book.

In bookstores and libraries, literary classics are a dime a dozen. There are so many different editions available of each that the problem becomes one not of finding a good read but of selecting the edition of it that's right for you. Charles Dickens is perhaps the most popular of the past masters. All his books are enormously entertaining, whether he's writing about the tragedies of this world or its travesties. His eye for the ludicrous is faultless; his representation of it in print is perfection. He never fails to paint on the canvass in our mind, with a few simple strokes, a comic character that resembles someone we've met somewhere, sometime in our lives. His characters are so real that he needs to do nothing more than describe their appearance briefly and then let them speak for themselves. They speak with all the dignity and importance we all feel in ourselves, yet they unwittingly disclose for the reader all the foibles we all possess ... and mistakenly think known only to ourselves. Likewise, when introducing tragic characters, Dickens prefers to offer brief but unerringly accurate descriptions of their build, demeanor, and dress, and then allow their own words and actions to speak for themselves. His creations elicit mirth and misery in us without fail as Dickens masterfully plucks the strings of our hearts.

Unlike most writers, Dickens is equally at home in both the short story and the full-length novel format. This is because his novels were serialized in periodicals in their first publications. Only later were they edited for book form. "Sketches by Boz" is an offering of Dickens's first attempts at writing for a living. It consists of 56 passages, most of which can be read in a single sitting of less than half an hour. These are divided into four sections: "Our Parish", "Scenes", "Characters", and "Tales". Of these, only the last contains fiction. The 44 nonfiction accounts are just as entertaining as their made-up brothers. In fact, I found them even more fun to read at times. Dickens only thinly disguised the identities of his victims while lampooning them, and as editor Dennis Walder so rightly points out, many of these descriptions would surely result in lawsuits for libel if they were published about public figures today.

This was my first experience reading a Penguin Classics edition of Dickens, and I was extremely pleased with it. The editor introduced "Sketches" with a few notes of academic and historical interest, a particular one of which I found to be of great interest as it finally answered a question I'd had for half my life: namely, where Dickens had acquired his nickname of Boz. But more important for today's reader of Dickens is the "Notes" section at the back of the book in which Mr. Walder defines Dickensian slang and explains the author's references to people, events, and places of early nineteenth century London. Much of Dickens's wit is lost on today's reader without such disclosures.

One of my favorite ways of reading a classic author is to collect all of his or her works and then read through them at a leisurely pace in the order they were written. I did this with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with the intention of noting how his style developed over the years. I was surprised to find an unexpected benefit of that project: I was transported to those times and felt as I imagine one of Doyle's contemporary fans must have felt as he read each new Sherlock Holmes story. After finishing Doyle, I immediately began collecting Dickens for a similar project. "Sketches by Boz", being a collection of Dickens's first literary efforts, was of course the first in this series. The second Dickens book is "The Pickwick Papers", of which I have the Library of the Future edition. But after reading the Penguin Classics "Sketches", I'm determined to first replace "Pickwick" with the Penguin edition. The Penguin books are reasonably priced and well worth every penny.

This was a wonderful collection of all of Charles Dickens works! I highly recommend!

When the authors read The Discipline of Market Leaders, they must have immediately realized the potential of bringing the ideas of being an innovator, effective producer, and relationship manager together. This book fulfills that synthesis in a zero-time concept, of immediately providing value for stakeholders. In a December 1999 poll in Fast Company Magazine, 38 percent of respondents indicated that some aspect of their company already operated in a zero execution time mode.

The book is built around five basic concepts for a targeted group of high profit margin customers:

(1) Instant Value Alignment with customers (FedEx's commitment to on-time delivery and instant access to tracking information)

(2) Instant Learning by employees and customers (Dell Computer's computer-based education at work cell assembly sites)

(3) Instant Adaptation of the organization (G.E.'s focus on building a direction for the company around vision and trust)

(4) Instant Execution of value for the customer (Progressive Insurance's accelerated claims processing methods)

(5) Instant Involvement of all stakeholders (Cisco Systems' involvement with its suppliers and outsourcers from development through implementation for customers)

A company can progress towards having all five elements in a three step process. First, you become a market leader by emphasizing either product/service innovation (employing instant learning and adaptation), operating excellence (using instant execution and involvement), or customer closeness (relationship building based on instant alignment and involvement). Second, you turn that into locking customers in by adding one more key element from the five part model. Third, you complete the transition into providing all five elements.

A t-strategy is described for making this transition. You find an opportunity that is unfilled (such as the desire to be alone in the middle of other people that is partly served by the Sony Walkman), develop a key core competency for that conceptual space, and expand into some zero-time operations. You first apply that vision, core comptence, and distinctiveness for one market, then expand it into different, but similar (and usually related) markets. These market extensions form the vertical part of the 't' shape. For example, Dell Computer wants to employ direct selling with a competency of build-to-order to dominate the market for PCs by operational effectiveness. It expands from desk-top PCs to portable ones, then to servers, and now into storage.

Now that you understand the model a bit, let me share a few quibbles. First, I disagree with the idea of focusing on a subset of customers who can provide the highest profit margin. I think a better concept is to identify the customers where they will give you the greatest combination of competitive insulation, profitability, and improvement in your economics of providing goods and services in order to be able to take on more customers profitably.

Second, several stakeholders are missing from the discussion here such as shareholders, bondholders, the communities in which you operate, and those who regulate what you do. More thinking needs to be done about how to apply the model there stakeholders.

Third, the authors argue that providing all three dimensions gives you a guaranteed customer for life. I disagree. You could still be upended by someone with a proprietary technology with the same zero-time elements that gives an edge in bringing more benefits to the customer. Another way of thinking about this is that technology can still be disruptive to this strategy (see The Innovator's Dilemma).

Fourth, the authors do not address how to make the cost-benefit trade-off decisions. Getting closer to zero time gets more and more expensive. How much is it worth? How fast should you transition to this level of performance? The book will tend to encourage a too-fast transition, in my judgment.

Fifth, when is a non-zero time response better? If someone asks me my opinion on an important subject, they may not want a response in 1 second. They may prefer that I pull together all of the resources of my organization for the next 3 days instead and provide a better answer. The book doesn't address that class of circumstances.

Sixth, how do you correct for errors? I frequently stay in hotel chains that pride themselves on writing down my preferences. Then they smile broadly as they anticipate my needs and provide those preferences. The only problem is, that those aren't really my preferences. For example, staying at a luxury hotel with a sore throat, I ordered mid-afternoon tea with lemon. I don't usually drink it that way, but that's the way it always comes when I am at that hotel. In another luxury hotel, someone asked me casually if I liked the room I was staying in. I was feeling friendly and happy, and said, 'Oh, yes!' Well, for the next six years, I had the same room -- even though I actually preferred a different room. I respect what these hotels are trying to do so much that I don't have the heart to tell them they are unintentionally giving me the wrong service.

Basically, like all models, it is a lot easier to understand than to do it well.

After you have completed this fine book, put yourself in your stakeholders' shoes. What would you really want from your company? How would you like to go about making that happen? How would you like to adjust your needs and the responses you receive? Then use those insights to talk directly with your stakeholders about how well you are doing. If you are like most of the companies I study, you aren't ever delivering the right value. You'll need to get that straightened out before you start working on getting great value provided in zero time.

Be effective!

The authors really take today's norm of 'operating companies' and challenges them to entirely re-think the fundamentals of their current operations for today and tomorrow. Zero Time is well thought out and raises the bar helping direct companies shift their paradigms in both thought and action to truly develop into tomorrow's champions - for the long term. It really is a must read for the new generation of e-business leaders and tomorrow's visionaries.

This first collection of traditional minimalist poetry by George Carle is truly memorable. The poetry revolves around the break up of his marriage and loss of children but in addition many poems are inspired by the atmospheric Hebridean island where he lives. A flood of verse seems to have been released by the rather tragic life events and his poetry is truly charged with emotion. There is a remarkable freshness to the poetry and I hope that he will soon publish another collection.

This 36 page booklett should be titled (What Everyone Should Know about Orthodox Christianity). Father George Nicozin gets right to the point in regards to the differences between Roman Catholics/Protestants and Orthodoxy with short chapters (many only a page long) on "Objections Protestants Make Against Orthodox", "The Bible in the Orthodox Church" From now on Orthodox Christians can recommend this one to those who inquire about Christian Orthodoxy.

I thought this was a sex manual, it's not. It's really a summary of a bunch of articles and books thrown together. Better and possibly cheaper to read the original sources. I didn't find it terribly helpful but you might want to get it for your son when he turns 16 if you have a good relationship with him.

Too bad did the reviewer (too cowardly to give his/her name) who called my book a summary of other articles and books doesn't know what he/she's talking about. Winston and I personally spent more than a year of our lives doing original research and writing for this book. First rule of writing: write what you know. That goes double for reviews. The second rule is, if you don't know what you're writing about, keep your fingers off the keyboard. Sorry if this sounds snappish, but I have zero tolerance for this brand of stupidity.

As the mother of a teenager and a very sensual person, I found this book to be very helpful in many situations. Though a woman, it has helped me in a couple of quandaries. I really like the format used. I have recommended this book on the discussion board I lead, "Talking to Kids About Sex," through iVillage TWN's Parent Soup Community. I have also recommended it to many friends.

Identify your risk factors a learn how to modify your life to prevent the leading cause of infant mortality in the U.S.
A big must read for all pregnant women no matter you health or walk of life.
Little legnthy on information on disability leave and State Government contact information.

this book helped me identify risk factors in my first premature birth, and avoid them in my second pregnancy. i recomend to anyone who may have or has had preterm labor or birth.

Buy it ASAP! Find out what you can do to possible reduce your chance of a premature birth. Contains excellent quizes to identify risk factors, but did they need to put them in twice? Also an extensive chapter on the Maternity Leave Act for all 50 States took up a good deal of the book.

...at every cliche in this book. Ms. Rosenthal and Mr. Dardess quizzed every in law, every outlaw, every aunt and uncle, parent and grandparent available, scribbled on the back of cocktail napkins, woke up in the middle of the night to scratch on the back of a light bill envelope to get all the cliches anyone could ever imagine and some that no one would ever have thought of...the cartoons, (listed as being done by the CRAG and Peter Lavigna) are hilarious, too. A chicken depositing eggs on the highway divider is "laying it on the line" and Bowser in his canine residence while consuming a frankfurter shows us "it's a dog eat dog world" (rimshot!).... Anyhoo, there are hilarious dialogs like "Mr. Arbuthnot and the Meaning of life" and "Mom and Pop And Sis And Junior" arguments that will make you sick with glee and tickled pink on how cleverly several cliches are placed in context of a conversation or two or three...the index alone is a wealth of information. Or a cavern of puns, however you look at it. You will fully enjoy this one. And when you finish, hand this book over to a friend, so he/she can get a kick out of it, also. (You know stacking my reviews with a boat load of cliches is right up my alley. Why did you think I could not resist tossing a few more logs in the fire in 'this' review ...?)

the fundamental ideas mentioned in this book are timeless, hence is valuable.

but some of the systems suggested are dated. the book needs an upgrade to keep up with the times.

satish paul

I guess if you enjoy reading Rolling Stone, then this is a great reference. However, if you listen to slightly more challenging, but equally essential music and are one of the ones complaining about the lack of a new edition, then look no further than the fifth edition of the Trouser Press Guide. Available right now from Amazon. But don't expect to read about Led Zeppelin or the Eagles in the TPG.

This is the second edition of this particular tome, and for somebody trying to get a sense of the history of rock 'n' roll and which old albums by artists are worth tracking down (and which ones aren't), it's a very valuable thing to have around.

Now, I mention this 2nd edition bit because I first stumbled upon this book sometime in the mid-late '80s, and the 1st edition from '79 or so did great coverage of old albums from the '50s-'70s, but good luck on getting the latest word on John Cougar or Def Leppard or the King of Pop or those other '80s artists we loved so much! Some solace was to be found when a 2nd edition came out in 1992 -- you could now find out what Rolling Stoners thought about '80s albums you had aleady purchased by then (in addition to the '50s-'70s albums, naturally).

Well, I think you see what I'm getting at. This is a great guide to what's out there at the time of publication, but it rapidly goes out-of-date. Sure, you'll find out good information about (yes, I'll go ahead and call him what I know him as) Prince's older albums, but as far as learning about the 348 albums he's released since 1992, you're out of luck. This is a book that really needs to come out in annual editions -- though that would be a difficult and likely unprofitable option for the writers. Too bad -- I may actually be willing to plunk down the money once a year for this thing.

Excellent and good fun. The New York Dolls review sums up the tone of this guide nicely. Definitely not for the Top 40 crowd though. If you're one of them, stay away as you'll probably get somewhat insulted.
A drawback is that out of print albums were omitted, which makes the guide incomplete as soon as these albums are reissued. And of course the guide is outdated. Any guide is the moment is goes off to the presses.
That said, we want an update now.