To read "Jim" Grant, former Executive Director ofUNICEF, is to read Cole P. Dodge--who survives Grant and remainssingularly dedicated to bettering the healthcare delivery systems to both women and children the world over.

A series of vignettes from the early 80s to the early 90s. I love these "time capsule" books.

Grant is a good author, and he is bearish, which is instinctually satisfying for most creatures.

One of the most experienced and respected fund-raising professionals in the United States, James M. Greenfield, ACFRE, FAHP, has assembled the best wisdom 42 other highly-regarded and experienced fund-raising leaders, into a comprehensive handbook covering nearly every conceivable aspect of fund development.   The Nonprofit Handbook:  Fund Raising isn't just a book; it's a fund raising curriculum between two covers.  Indeed, I am unaware of any other volume which attempts -- and successfully so, I might add -- to map the entire scope of fund raising so thoroughly.  A warning, though:  It would be a monumental task to read this book in its entirety.  Rather, its best use is as a fund raising reference - a one-volume library for articles covering just about any topic fund development professionals are likely to encounter.   For example, folks who are involved with an annual fund will want to focus on Part III, entitled "Annual Giving Program." The section contains articles on "Overview of Annual Giving," "Direct Mail," "Benefit Event Fundamentals," "Benefit Event Enhancements," Telemarketing," and "Volunteer-Led Solicitations."   To take another example, folks looking for major donors will turn to Part IV, entitled "Major Giving Programs," containing thorough treatments on these topics:  "Overview of Major Giving," "The Corporate Support Marketplace," "The Grant-Seeking Process," "Major Gifts from Individuals," "Capital Fund Appeals," "Planned giving:  Gift Vehicles," and "Planned Giving:  Management and Marketing."   One drawback is its price.  At $210, it's one of the pricier books in fund raising.  However, this is a two-volume set.  I've described only the "Fund Raising" volume; there is also Management volume, covering -- again, in encyclopedic fashion -- all aspects of nonprofit management.  We'll be reviewing that in the next installment of "We Review."  Despite the price of the set, I cannot imagine any well-equipped fund development department not having these volumes available to the staff. 

I got this book to support West Point's bicentennial. Now that I have actually looked at it (and I put it that way because it is mostly pictures and not much text), I find it disappointing. The text, though properly written and edited, is quite boring. Many of the pictures are amateurishly blown up to the extent that they are washed out. The book, or glorified brochure, or whatever you want to call it, has the feel of being hastily put together to get out in time to make money for all concerned. To me, that takes from what should have been a noble purpose. I don't think it succeeded in achieving that noble purpose. In fact, now that the Party is over, I wouldn't recommend it.

I admit I didn't watch the PBS program to which this book is 'companion,' but I have no doubt that the pretty pictures on TV matched the pretty pictures in this book. In fact, that's probably the biggest impression I carry away from this book: it's very ... colorful. The text gives an adequate history of the US Military Academy, hitting on all the requisite high points: Thayer, Lee, Flipper, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Hollen, and so on. The images -- portraits, old maps, memorabilia from the USMA museum, etc -- decently illustrate the text (though the contemporary photos mixed in with the historic ones are sometimes rather *non sequitur* to what's being discussed). Among the great piles of books and videos that have been produced to observe West Point's bicentennial, I'm sure this picture book will be very popular. But I suspect it will mean more to people who didn't themselves actually attend the school. Those who did will find little that's new -- and despite the Academy's official cooperation with this production, may find the book too, well, glossy for their tastes.

Partly because I grew up as an Army brat, I've always been fascinated by the military and naval academies, as far back as the 1950s TV series "The Long Grey Line." This coffee table book is a companion to a special on PBS marking the 200th anniversary of President Jefferson's founding of a military educational institution at West Point, up the Hudson from New York. It's a gorgeous piece of work, with as much attention given to the text as to the pictures, tracing the Academy from its floundering first few years, to the sixteen-year reign of Superintendent Sylvanus Thayer (the true father of the school), through the classes that supplied most of the leaders on both sides of the Civil War (who all had served together in the War with Mexico), through the long years leading up to World War I. Fifty-nine of the cadets in the Class of 1915 ("the Class the Stars Fell On") became general officers, and one became president. During the later days of the Vietnam War, cadets seldom left the school, they were so badly treated by civilians their own age, and there were several major cheating scandals -- the author doesn?t whitewash any of that stuff -- but the Academy, having revised itself almost continuously for two centuries -- seems to be coming back. This is a beautiful book.

This books gives a history of U.S. politics more than it tells you about Baruch's involvements in Wall Street. It is nice to know of his achievemnts in helping President Wilson run the government but too much details and chapters spent on this sort of distort the meaning of the book's title! Sometimes a story sets on a sideline and then the amount of details given on the sideline event actually trips you off the original story. Its a good enough read if you have the time and patience.

James Grant does a fair job. Baruch does come across as a likeable personality. The author perhaps could have been a little more critical in his analysis and also focussed on Baruch's private life and public years after 1945 a bit more.

The story is fascinating and you can't help but like Baruch despite his ego. Grant does a nice job although more because he was truly interested in the man rather than because he's a great biographer.

I have done many budgets and taught workshops and seminars on how to do budgets. The first response I had to this book is that I was glad I understood the process because if I didn't, I would not be able to understand this book. It is obfuscating, repetitive, and full of obscure, irrelevant quotes from such diverse sources as Humpty Dumpty, the Cheshire Cat and Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, I usually don't use obfuscating words or concepts myself, but this book has led me to do so. Having said that, I did gain new knowledge, new concepts and new viewpoints that will be very helpful. It was hard work to find these gems - I prefer direct, basic explanations since they usually avoid confusion. I also disliked Wise Guy and Wise Lady - text set aside in blocks - where he asks dumb questions and she give smart-aleck or condescending answers to dumb questions. Both are insulting to the intelligence of the reader.

This is definitely not a book that you pick up as a reference source when you are beginning or in the middle of preparing a budget. It is not a book for beginners, unless you have the time and patience to work your way through, chapter by chapter, learning their process step by step. Indeed, it would be a good text for a full semester class, with lectures and homework and steady progression through its many topics. Budgets don't really come into the picture until Chapter 5. The authors require that you learn or relearn their terminology relevant to grant writing before you can approach actual budgeting. Throughout the book they present concepts and ideas, and drag on through several paragraphs or pages saying what something is not before saying what it is. By their definition, of course - which you must accept to move forward.

This is really a book on preparing grant applications, not just budgets. Several chapters and sections of chapters are devoted to projects, programs, defining problems, defining solutions, project development, and program evaluation. Each is described in detail, with examples and forms, which are also available on the accompanying CD-ROM. By the time you get to Chapter 5 and see a budget form you are exhausted. But take a vitamin pill - Chapters 6 through 9 detail in depth the difference components of a budget, using their terminology. Which you memorized back in the beginning of the semester for the first test. Again, the explanations are exhaustive and belabored, and stated often in negatives, which is confusing. For example, Chapter 6 is dedicated to explaining direct costs. There are nine pages defining the different types of travel, including definitions of travel by watercraft and by animal. After all the various modes of travel are defined, the rest of the chapter explains how to acquire each of them on site and the different types of each. Bus travel is broken down into inter-city, intra-city, and chartered. They also describe express buses and local buses, and where and how to purchase tickets. More information than most of us need, to say the least. If you don't know the difference between an express and a local bus by now, you are in big trouble. Not that it is relevant to preparing a budget anyway.

The authors are committed to a budget format that uses very specific line items. They state that any item you can put in a budget can fit into one of their categories. Just for fun, I came up with a couple of items I would put in a budget that I couldn't fit into their scheme. And if you want to use their forms from the CD-ROM, you must do all your budgets according to their line items. You are on your own if you have a potential funder that demands you use their forms and their line items.

If you can ignore all the indirect, convoluted and useless information, this book has a lot to offer. Many concepts are very valuable and useful. Some of the forms are also useful. There are planning forms and evaluation forms in addition to more budget forms that usually appear in one place. Select the information that is relevant, ignore the rest and use what is applicable. Wading through the chaff to get to the wheat is not easy, but many of the kernels are worth the effort. And if you are taking or teaching a full semester course this could be a useful text or supplement.

In providing a much-needed context for the discussion of grant proposal budgets, the authors have actually created a step by step, straightforward plan to design a sound project. They begin with how a good project springs from a problem that your organization can solve. Then they walk you through defining the project's purpose, goals, and component steps.

I am torn about this book, because I believe grant seekers should NOT be the ones to design programs; program staff ought to do that. However, I realize that in reality grants people often end up with this task, or can act as advisors and coaches to those going through the process. And in any case, we grant seekers need to understand the task of project design and how it relates to expressing a project in numbers and words when approaching a funder.

The book goes on to focus on budgets, after the groundwork of planning has been expertly laid. The sections on budgets are very useful for anyone dealing with government proposals.

So, while the book takes a stance I don't necessarily agree with - that the grant seeker is a project designer - I have rated it highly because it is sure to result in better planned projects for anyone who follows its advice.

This book is just a copy of JMS tutorials from java site and has examples which are written using jmq which is no longer available as it has now become part of iPlanet group and they have broken compatibility (Interfaces have been changed) Not the worst book but certainly worst wrox book i have ever read

This book covers a lot of ground about JMS. However, the problem is that it is written by many authors, which results in repetition of some subject, bad structure of the book and more pages than necessary for explaining the subjects.

The first 5 chapters are on 250 pages and cover the basic about JMS, but I think "Java Message Service" by Monson-Haefel does a better job here. However, I appreciate that there are sequence diagrams in the first chapter that shows basic design patterns for MOM-based applications. The next two chapters is code example that shows how to use JMS from a web application and from EJBs. I'm not too found about this kind of lengthy code examples.

The chapter about JMS and Clustering is very technical, but still only scratches the surface. This is a subject that needs an own book to be covered completely. The next chapter called "Distributed Logging Using JMS" is again a lengthy code example, but a very useful one!

Chapter 10 is about XML Messaging with some XML code example. I think this chapter, like some of the other chapters as well, covers too little to be of some real value and too much for just being an overview. Chapter 11 is about Mobile Applications and the criticism against this chapter is the same as the chapter about XML.

All and all this is a book that covers a lot of subjects related to JMS, but it does it in a boring and verbose way.

I expect that with introduction of JMS and Message Driven Beans which are based on this technology we will see very big movement towards implementing various application scenarious based on JMS. This book definitely could help you to decide what should be taken in account. I also like chapter on Clustering and Scalability - each enterprise (and you as developer for this enterprise) should think about this during design stage. List of various JMS providers (SonicMQ, IBM MQ Series, FioranoMQ, WebLogic) and implemented by them features could also be helpful.

I was very surprised when I ordered this book and found out that yes, indeed, it was merely a very tiny portion of what I had expected. I suppose I should have known from the price, but the description (at least at that time) did not make it clear that it wasn't the entire dictionary.

While this may be a very thorough source for the words it covers, it should be noted in the basic information that this is ONLY 128 pages of a 15,000 page work. The description above is very misleading.

itz a dictionary. what more can i say

I purchased this book based on the strength of the last work by Arnold I read, Grant Wins The War. Whereas that book was rich in detail and thoroughly covered all aspects of the Vicksburg campaign, this book was more superficial. I would not recommend it to anyone as a first reference for any of Grant's battles. Each campaign gets only the most superficial coverage in terms of strategy, tactics and events during the fighting. Shiloh merits only a few pages, for example. The western theater battles receive more detail than the eastern theater. Arnold is a bit too apologetic for Grant's leadership when he moved to the Army of the Potomac. However I did find this work very useful for the rich and detailed coverage of items of interest: tactics and training, weaponry, recruiting, army organization, the soldiers' life, supply and the like. Most books about the Civil War years which I have read so far (more than 20 books) were not so thorough on these points as Arnold. So I found this book a useful adjunct to Grant Wins The War. I recommend that book as essential reading to everyone, whereas The Armies of US Grant is more a supplement to the Civil War aficianado.

There's no doubt about it. Seeking foundation, corporate and other charitable support for elementary and secondary education is tough. Often grants are sought by teachers, parents and volunteers, who have little or no real background in seeking such contributions. Even professional grant seekers employed by a school can be daunted in matching the needs of the client to the right foundations.     Yet, elementary and secondary schools succeeded in attracting more than $568 million in grants in 1995. If so much money is being given, how can your school get its fair (or unfair!) share?     One important place to begin the search for such grants is the Foundation Center's National Guide to Funding for Elementary & Secondary Education, 4th Edition. This 725-page volume reports on 6,331 grants in support of a variety of programs, including vocational, bilingual, and special education, curriculum development,and programs for gifted or minority students.     Entries include such useful information as foundation type, assets, expenditures, grants paid and number of grants made during the year, and so on. In fact, each entry contains 34 items of information.     So essential is this volume for those seeking grant dollars for elementary and secondary schools that I cannot imagine proceeding without it.