This is an outstanding resource for any woman who is in leadership and who desires to see true Spiritual growth in the female community of believers of the church. Firstly, it addresses issues that pertain to the leader and her 'spiritual condition'. We all have so much to learn in our position of ministry and Porter addresses such issues as "Her heart", "Her Temperament", and "Her Life Experiences"; all of which affect her leadership. Secondly, Porter paints a very realistic picture of the church cultures that exist today and how this will directly affect "Women's Ministries". This is very insightful and helps the reader form a realistic vision for the ministry within her own church. Thirdly, this resource addresses and emphasizes the importance of the Word. Women need to be in the Word; the Word is the "power unto salvation/freedom". I concur with Porter that an effective Women's Ministry will be built on many elements... prayer, goals, flexibility, outreach, missions, encouragement, and most importantly, Bible study. This is a MUST resource (including survey suggestions and additional resources) which will trigger the female leader/visionary of your church and, ultimately, through the Lord's design, encourage program development that will draw women to Himself. That's where the "rubber hits the road". Thank you Porter and Hamel!

Chris DeHamel works researching books for Sotheby's. That is all he does, and his numerous books on the subject show his mastery and command of the subject. Everyday he goes to work, he is getting time to research, free of teaching committments that fetter the ability of other scholars to pursue their writing. His research and ability shows in this beatiful and well-written book, which is an excellent introduction to the history of the book and to the processes and culture surrounding the book as an object. His book progresses, chapter-by-chapter, through the different groups that books were designed for, describing where and why they were made, and the special challenges of each. Chock-full of photographs of lavish manuscript writing and art, this volume is not only an extremely suitable textbook for art history and history classes dealing with the book or commodity-culture, but also is a great personal or coffeetable volume, and supremely reasonable at the price it is provided at, considering the cost of so many art texts.

This is the first illumination book I encourage my students to purchase (with Drogin's history of calligraphy). This is an entirely reasonable price with abundant color and b&w pictures.

Unlike many tretises on the topic, this doesn't limit you to post-1200 Anglo-French. This gives you a true oversight of western european illumination of the entire span of the middle ages (spanish, moorish, greek, latin, etc...)

Added to the benefit of examples, de Hamel doesn't subject you to the same pictures you've seen in every other 2-bit book (yes, Victoria, other books existed before 1200 besides the Book of Kells).

The text is thoughtful without being dry and boring. This is written for an audience which is expected to appreciate the subject, without assuming you've devoted your life to it already.

Walk, do not run, to get this. A must for anyone who is learning how to illuminate.

A beautiful book, lavishly illustrated to explain and enhance the text. Many of the images are from private collections thanks to the author's work at Sotheby's.

The text is very accessible for the non-expert. The reader's understanding and appreciation of the art and craftsmanship which went into illuminated manuscripts will be greatly increased.

Worth every penny.

Seeking a book on inspired guidance in the Judeo-Christian tradition? Look elsewhere. This is a voluminous history of the Bible. But it doesn't read like history. The life of "The Book" is too grand a story to be told without verve and passion.

Two thousand years after the birth of Jesus, and four thousand after the birth of Abraham, is there anything that hasn't been written about the Bible? As it turns out, quite a lot. Christopher De Hamel, formerly the manuscripts curator for Sotheby's and currently on the faculty at Cambridge, has given us in "The Book: A History of the Bible" what we didn't have before: a book about the Bible as a book. His narrative begins with St. Jerome's translation of the Bible into Latin, and proceeds through the centuries to describe how it has been copied, illustratied, translated, and printed, in both its Jewish and Christian forms. De Hamel's prose style is lively and engaging, and the illustrations are copious and beautiful high-resolution photographs of stunning examples of the Bible-maker's art. The book is filled with small gems. Did you know, for example, that more Bibles survive from the thirteenth century than any other artifact, save possibly buildings? This book should reach a wide and diverse audience, from those who revere the Bible as the Word of God to those who want to gain a better understanding of its historical and literary importance.

Excellent reference for all linguists/students. Sort of difficult to study with however...Should be divided into categories if you intend to use it as a study manual.

I am very glad to have this book. It is very thorough and scholarly - much more so than NTC's dictionary of false cognates. It avoids silly "false cognates" such as soap-sopa and poster-postre that no one with any formal study of the language would fall into. Rather, it clarifies some of the ones that trip up even good Spanish speakers. The examples of usage the book gives are excellent. I highly recommend it.

I really recommend this book,easy to understand, easy to follow and great recipes. I would have liked Suzanne Somers to focus more on the healthy fats and not so much eggs and meat, thats why I am only giving 4 stars. I started the programm 2 weeks ago and have really lost weight without starving myself. I cannot tell you how much, because I dont own a scale, but from how my clothes fit, I would assume somewhere around 2-4 pounds. I never in my life had problems with weight and I didn't really know what it feels like to be on diet, but during my pregnancy I gained 40 pounds and couldn't loose it all after my baby was born. Than we moved from Europe to the US and I thought: This is my chance, with all those fat free foods in the US. I'll Loose those 10 pounds excess weight in no time." But I not only did NOT LOOSE the weight, I gained 10 pounds more, was hungry all the time and had incredible sugar ups and downs. Now after two weeks the craving for sugar is gone, although I must admit it took one incredible long week to get over it, I don't have these energy drops in the middle of the afternoon anymore and don't feel bloated after every meal. I eat more vegetables than ever before! Over the weekend we had friends over and I started to cheat a little. So, at a mexican place I not only ate tortilla with the chicken, but I had the fried beans and the white rice, too. Boy, did I feel bad- it was not worth it. THIS IS GREAT WAY TO EAT! But I honestly think, that it works more because of the elimination of sugar and bad carbohydrates and not so much because of the food combination. For those of you, who would like to have more insight in the food digestions chemistry read "Michel Montignacs 'Eat yourself slim'" He explains it in more details than Suzanne Somers does. Good luck to all you Somersizers!

I read quite a few of the reviews listed here before deciding to purchase this book. I was happy to see that there were many favorable statements made. I just started "Somersizing" yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed what I choose from the plan. I made the homemade roquefort dressing and my husband and I loved it. I wanted to comment on some of the negative items such as complaints about Ms. Somers requesting that you cut out sugar but then having you eat high amounts of sugars elsewhere. These are "natural" sugars and come from the piece of fruit you are eating not overprocessed, chemical infested foods! These are actually good for you, in moderation. I have skipped from diet to diet and have done quite a bit of research and have found that eliminating white flour items and sugar from your diet can be very helpful. The first couple of days are difficult. You're changing your eating habits but believe me it's for the better! I got on the scale this morning and lost 3 1/2 pounds since yesterday. I know that most of this is water weight but it is still a step in the right direction (down!). Other plans have eliminated too many of the things I enjoy (bread for one). This plan allows you more freedom and some delicious recipes to choose from. I'm enjoying a delicious "Smoothie" as I write this review. Wish me luck!

Finally, a way to eat, lose weight, and feel great! After years of ups and downs, and lately really down in the dumps with frustration, I feel this makes sense! Suzanne wrote a so-called diet book that is fun to read, easy recipes (delicious, too!) and it was also heartwarming. Many diet books are dry and boring. She made it quirky while also making you think about what we have been doing to our body with all this sugar, etc. After two days of being on this reconditioning (I hate the word "diet"), I felt 100% better. While I would love to sink my teeth into a chocolate bar (as I am an avid chocoholic), my cravings for the carbos are gone. I pop some grapes into my mouth at night and not only does it fill me up it solves the "sweet tooth" craving. I've been on it for 1 1/2 weeks and I've lost about 6 lbs. already. You are not depriving yourself (such as Atkins---which I did and could not stick to). I'm eating more fruits and veggies than I ever did before and I'm probably giving myself a healthier heart in the process. Try it. You'll like it!

This author ought to find a new protagonist. I think she's burned out on Neil. Nothing new going on in her life. The Kid is phoning in his performance. Neil's sexlife is deader than a dodo. The plot was okay, but predictable. Teen gangbangers aren't all that interesting. Oh, well. As I like to save my money, I checked this one out of the library and am glad I did. It was a one day read and now I can go on to something bigger and better.

This author exposes us to an inside view of living life in todays gang infested citys. Once again Judith Van Gieson paints word pictures that draw you into the midst of her investigation. An enjoyable read. Beverly J Scott author of Righteous Revenge

Judith Van Gieson is one of the best writers working the genre, and in Ditch Rider she just keeps getting better. She keeps her subjects immersed in the social issues of the day -- from smuggling rare birds to wolf reintroduction, to this book's gang girls. It's a treat to read her prose -- "We stepped out of the Nissan, shutting the doors behind us very carefully and quietly. We walked in the middle of the road so as not to crunch the gravel on the shoulder and set off all the dogs in the hood. The dogs heard us anyway and began barking one after another, knocking down quiet like dominoes. 'Callesan, perritos,' whispered the Kid." As a former New Mexican, I especially love the way she brings the landscape to life. You can almost smell the damp earth by the irrigation ditch, feel the dry air on your skin. Her evocation of her neighborhood, complete with delinquent girls next door, rings just right. Can't wait to see what happens next in Neil's personal life, now that Neil's bought a house and given the Kid some closet space! Keep 'em coming!

Every recipe seemed like you always needed to refrigerate your dough for a very long time before you could actually bake, then enjoy. A lot of the recipes called for specialty items that you just can't go to the local grocery and buy. Laura sells these items on her own out of a magazine. I am thinking of ordering some just so that I can try these recipes but the prices are a bit high.

I just made the triple chocalate babka - very good but took a long time to get to the finished project. The recipes are nice and tasty but time consuming so start in the morning if you want something by dinner!

If you like desserts & have a bread machine, this book is for you! Try the Croissants...try the Chocolate & Cherry Loaf...try them all!! Recipe variations for each of the major brands of bread machines, and lots of helpful information included.

Epiphanies come hard. In Ruth Hamel's new book of 14 short stories, the reader meets a gaggle of neurotic thirty-and-forty-somethings who live in tight little mental cages, yet who are all yearning to break free. Few, however, are willing to give up the security of not knowing. In other words, they are ordinary people.
In the hands of a concept sculptor like Hamel, the stories engender pleasure through pain. "Kinded," for example, features two fortyish brothers who despise each other, competing even about their mutual inadequacies, negative memories, and social incompetencies. They reach an impasse on kvetching ghrough a stranger's act of kindess which results in the possibility, the mere possibility, of hope for a better future.
The narrator in the book's title story tells lies, ostensibly to soothe the hurts truth would bring. She is a furnitue refinisher who uses creative destruction to improve damaged goods. But her congenital "tact" is only a way of avoiding pain and, in the end, seems self-delusional. "Seems" is the operative verb for this author's work. Ambiguity is all.
Her stories are set in faceless high-rises, bedraggled factory towns, mildewed basements. They are filled with loathsome lovers, ex-drum majorettes, cast-off wives, nerds and George Costanzas. Hamel's world may even contain the sad truth, as one of the characters says, that life is content to let us pass unnoticed.
The epiphanies may be ambiguous. The pleasure of "My Favorite Lies" is not.

Sy Barasch

Epiphanies come hard. In Ruth Hamel's new book of 14 short stories, the reader meets a gaggle of neurotic thirty-and-forty-somethings who live in tight little mental cages, yet who are all yearning to break free. Few, however, are willing to give up the security of not knowing. In other words, they are ordinary people.
In the hands of a concept sculptor like Hamel, the stories engender pleasure through pain. "Kinded," for example, features two fortyish brothers who despise each other, competing even about their mutual inadequacies, negative memories, and social incompetencies. They reach an impasse on kvetching through a stranger's act of kindness which results in the possibility, the mere possibility, of hope for a better future.
The narrator in the book's title story tells lies, ostensibly to soothe the hurts truth would bring. She is a furniture refinisher who uses creative destruction to improve damaged goods. But her congenital "tact" is only a way of avoiding pain and, in the end, seems self-delusional. "Seems" is the operative verb for this author's work. Ambiguity is all.
Her stories are set in faceless high-rises, bedraggled factory towns, mildewed basements. They are filled with loathsome lovers, ex-drum majorettes, cast-off wives, nerds and George Costanzas. Hamel's world may even contain the sad truth, as one of the characters says, that life is content to let us pass unnoticed.
The epiphanies may be ambiguous. The pleasure of "My Favorite Lies" is not.

Ann Beattie, watch out: you've got some serious competition. With razor-sharp wit and not a word wasted, Ruth Hamel deftly captures the quirks of ordinary people and in so doing makes them extraordinary--and fascinating. The prose in "My Favorite Lies" is so deliciously, audaciously precise that it makes you want to shout, leap up, and find someone to read these stories to. A friend who admires Hamel's talent as much as I do said that after reading "My Favorite Lies," he found himself viewing the world through her lens. Succeeding in getting us to see in a new and different way: isn't that the definition of art? I'm eagerly awaiting more from this seriously gifted writer, and am shocked that a major publishing house hasn't yet grabbed her. Maybe they have by now--I hope so.

If your really want to understand how to compete for the future, read Crossing the Chasm, following by Inside the Tornado (Geoffrey Moore). Competing for the Future will largely waste your time. It is a 100 page book crammed into 300+ pages. The authors spend lots of time repeating fuzzy feel good ideas, and criticizing current managers, but say little that would actually help you compete for the future. They continually cite Apple as the poster child for Competing for the Future (ignoring the fact that the Mac was created in a skunkworks -- a concept they poo-poo.) Yet you can see from Apple's plight today that Hamel and Prahalad have certainly not found the most important thing for long term success. Companies that spend too much time looking 20 years out will never see it, as Apple will not. The truth is that top management can certainly ask themselves "What will competition mean in 20 years?", but they will most certainly be wrong. We live in chaotic times, and the best companies know how to turn on a dime and exploit current emerging markets (Microsoft is great at this). Hamel and Prahalad's books is destined to sit on many shelves, looking very impressive but doing nothing for its readers.

Competing for the Future, by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad focuses on new issues and techniques of strategic planning as discovered, articulated, and reported by the authors, both Professors of Business at the University of Michigan. The main message of the book reads as follows: in order for a company to be a success, the company must create its future instead of following other companies into the future.

By "creating the future" the authors understand defining and exploiting yet unknown future market opportunities. The opportunities do not have to be confined to the company's core competencies (although the book places significant emphasis on utilizing those). Instead, the company can choose to find alternate distribution channels, beneficial alliances, and other creative means of reinventing itself. The authors offer a wide array of management tools to successfully perform the corporate definition of future consumer needs.

The authors emphasize the corporate need for continuous innovation and reinvention. According to the book, many once-successful companies have failed because of their lack of regeneration and their erroneous belief in persistence of yesterday's business practices. Among the ways to successful corporate regeneration, the authors credit corporate diversity on the thinking level as successful means for breaking established corporate "myths" of the right way of doing business. The authors note that hiring personnel from outside industries can bring fresh and vital perspective on the present state of an enterprise.

In order to develop the future, a company must first define it. In defining the future today, Hamel and Prahalad suggest building "the best possible assumption base about the future." The "assumption base" is to indicate to management what changes in the company's products, competencies, and consumer interface are necessary in order to address future customer needs. The collective information about the changes of tomorrow comprises company's vision.

In order to create a successful vision of the future, a company needs dedicated senior management that "can escape the orthodoxies of the corporation's current 'concept of self'", and can enlarge the window of today's possibilities as projected into the future. The authors stress that a corporation should stretch the boundaries surrounding its competitive position of today in order to include tomorrow's competition and changes in customer needs. The book defines a successful corporate vision as the one that demands more of the corporation than the corporation is capable of providing today. Such a "stretch" between today's capacities and tomorrow's vision ensures that the company innovates in order to achieve the set goals, whereas "perfect fit [would guarantee corporate] atrophy and stagnation".

The book underscores the importance of basing tomorrow's market vision on core competencies of the corporation rather than on acquisition of other businesses or "grass roots 'intrapreneurship'". According to Hamel and Prahalad, core competencies represent "competitive strength" of an enterprise, defined and agreed upon by the company's general management. Building on the core competencies gives the company an immediate advantage over competition that needs to assemble similar competencies prior to entering the competitive race.

The authors note that corporate vision by itself "does not guarantee competitive success". In order for a company to be profitable, the company's foresight should be accompanied by a sufficient executional capacity. Executional capacity refers to continuous leverage of core competencies accompanied by healthy risk mitigation practices. The authors list several tools that can be used to leverage corporate core competencies in order to take hold of future market opportunities. One of the aforementioned tools is the process of aligning corporate operations based on core competencies rather than products and/or business functions. Operations focused on products and services fragment core competencies, and can subsequently truncate corporate opportunities for growth by disallowing deployment of core competencies when the need arises. Another crucial tool in successful execution of corporate vision is a regular review of core competencies together with competencies benchmarking against existing and potential competition in order to assure the company's market position.

In addition to the ideas cited in this paper, the authors describe myriad of ways to enhance tomorrow's competitiveness of an enterprise. Overall, the book is written in a motivational and comprehensive style. Peppered with real-life examples, the book offers thorough guidance to advance in the future marketplace.

I am a corporate strategy consultant who works mostly with FORTUNE 200 companies, and I also write books and articles about strategy. Strategic thinking has gone in and out of fashion in such companies several times in the last 40 years. With this book, Hamel and Prahalad have raised the value of strategic thinking in the current context in an effective way. This book is clearly designed with the large company in mind, where the need to envision, communicate about, and organize for the future is most difficult. By breaking down strategic thinking into the elements described here, the authors make strategic thinking easier for those who have little experience. Interestingly enough, many companies have "banned" strategic thinking in favor of more tactically-oriented programs that produce near-term cost reductions. Our firm recently did a survey of the most successful CEOs, and they reported that they felt that better strategies had the most potential to most improve their companies. These same CEOs also reported that they understood little about how to create better strategies. In such companies, COMPETING FOR THE FUTURE can provide an excellent balance. A good book to read in conjunction with this one is Peter Drucker's, MANAGEMENT, which provides the intellectual heritage for many of these ideas. For people who need more detail than Drucker normally provides, COMPETING FOR THE FUTURE will be the more helpful book.

I have to admit I am thoroughly dissappointed by this book and cannot understand the positive reviews it received from several of the other readers, except that they may be academics. If you are somebody who is only interested in the theory and philosophical background of corporate partnerships, this might be the book you are looking for, but if you are, like myself, a practical doer, who is looking for hands-on insight and knowledge on this topic, you will be deeply dissappointed. Also several of the examples of "showcase" alliances, such as Iridium, are not only outdated, but in fact, bankrupt. Very annoying to read about these "great" alliances, that several months after publishing went belly up. To sum it up, for the practical business professionals among you, I suggest you keep on researching on other books in this genre. Unfortunately, since I didn't read yet any other books on this topic, I cannot offer an alternative book advice.

This book is disappointing in too many ways. As is often the case with works by Hamel, the ideas are interesting but there is little practical description of how one might implement them. In the time since most of the research was compiled (evidently in the late 1980s and early 1990s), several of the profiled alliances have failed. This is the danger of any business book (viz: In Search of Excellence), but it seems particularly problematic here. Perhaps it's from skepticism borne by all of the Wall Street meltdowns over the past year, but as the book prattles on about this "new" way of doing business, one cant help wonder whether there is any wisdom here, given that Doz and Hamel couldnt seem to separate the successes from the failures. The inclusion of failures (like Iridium) seem all the worse because there are so few alliances covered. By the third chapter, with the umpteenth mention of the GE-SNECMA alliance, I wondered: why not base this book on a little more than five or six case studies? And that's the biggest problem with this book. There is so little material here that even though the text is only about 280 pages, by the third chapter it is getting grossly repetitive; if you make it to chapter seven (which is one of the few good ones), you win a prize.

"Strategic alliances are a logical and timely response to intense and rapid changes in economic activity, technology, and globalization, all of which have cast many corporations into two competitive races: one for the world and the other for the future. Globalization opened the race for the world as firms entered once-closed markets and pursued untapped opportunities. The race for the future compels firms to discover new market opportunities, new solutions for customers, new answers to poorly met needs...This book aims to help managers and their companies to be more successful in creating and guiding their strategic alliances. To that end it offers both conceptual and practical tools for analyzing the design and performance of alliances and presents a wide range of examples of both successful and unsuccessful collaborations" (from the Introduction).

In this context, Yves L.Doz and Gary Hamel assume that "two corporations have agreed to work together.They have assessed the value creation potential of their alliance and their own strategic compatibility. And they have decided on a design that promises to enhance collaboration and minimize tension. Everything looks good. Yet the fledgling partners find themselves unable to move from planning to implementation. Why?" Hence, in Chapter 6, after exploring in detail the gaps that separate these corporations from the start, they summarize these gaps as following:

1. Frame Gap: Perspective and definition for understanding the relationship and heuristic gap rules for behaving within it, driving day-to-day interaction.

2. Expectations Gap: Benchmark against which the actual performance (or the strength of early signals alerting to performance difficulties) is to be assessed.

3. Organizational Context Gap: Structure and process for decision making, work, oreganization and performance, and organizational learning may be more or less compatible between partners.

4. Confidence Gap: Self-confidence allows strong personal commitments and personal risk taking in cooperation; lack of confidence makes wholehearted cooperation difficult.

5. Skill Understanding Gap: Need to combine and blend differentiated skills between partners, in particular where process integration is required.

6. Task Definition Gap: Need to define a concrete set of tasks in order to start operational and tangible cooperation.

7. Information Gap: Need to share information.

8. Time Gap: Need to keep balance of costs and benefits in perspective over time, for each partner and between partners.

Hence, they explore how these gaps can be closed. And they say as a common theme runs through their recommendations that "companies should invest in their understanding of the situation and gather intelligence about their partners. They should view the inception of the partner relationship as an opportunity to learn and to improve. This may be more important than blindly rushing into implementation of joint task."

Highly recommended.