When I saw the publisher's comment "Before the curtain rises ...careful attention to planning, budgeting and scheduling must be overseen" I thought I had found a book that would help me in my task of setting up a budget and developing a stratigic or at least a single project plan for a new theater company. Wrong. While there are useful forms for scheduling certain tasks as well as some accounting forms, neither the Index or the Table of Contents mention planning or budgeting. This book seems to assume that planning and budgeting have already taken place. For this reason, I was rather disappointed in the content and felt misled by the publisher's comment.

Having said the above, however, I do believe the forms are well put together and will save the weeks of work it would take to design them, and even more time lost if they were not available. This book is really about day-to-day operations and not about the broader tasks of management. I believe if the book had been titled "Theater Office Forms and Guidelines" or "The Administration of Theater Operations", I would still have purchased it and would not have been disappointed in the content.

My wife and I agree... this book, how can we say it... has great and continuous vaccuum. We purchased it to take with us and read on a 16 hour flight to Australia. It was my turn first. To say the least, I'm certainly glad our pilot was not also reading it. Pointless, self indulgent, and boring. I made it 60 pages before I went back for a second read of the Airline's flight magazine. It is extremely rare that I don't finish a book, but in this case I can't imagine anything more torturous.

My wife took it as more of a challenge. A challenge to make it through the book... and that she did... reading it because "Surely, it must get better". It apparently never did. She WAS going to read Independence Day... not anymore.

What exactly *do* you do to get a Pulitzer anyway. He couldn't possibly have upgraded his style that much could he??