His detailed explanation of the foundation, framing and roofing process (the areas he has direct experience building) are very interesting and will help anyone know more about what they are buying/building. I recommend this book to anyone thinking about building or remodeling a home.

A major feature of this book is its discussion of design and hardware features in your future home. We will be able, now, to have an informed discussion with our architect and builder about many essential aspects of our home design.

The extensive discussion--occurring throughout the book--about relationships between the owner, architect, builder and subcontractors was worth its weight in gold. MAN, the mistakes we are going to avoid!!

This book gives extensive insight to the perspective of the general contractor, and of problems that the general contractor faces--with the architect, the owner, and the sub-contractors.

As a result of reading this book, we are now contemplating the choice of a builder before we decide upon an architect--directly contrary to our earlier thoughts. As we read and contemplate more, we shall see.

We are planning our first experience in building a custom home--and it is the home we intend to live in until.... So, this is a BIG deal.

We learned SO much from this book. If there is a more informative book on the subject, we would like to know!!

Three conditions are highlighted:

1. Feedback 2. Specific goals 3. Difficult goals

One of the most interesting critiques concerns time horizons and motivational techniques to get you through the boring task to something more pleasant.

Don't let the publication date fool you. This book will be pertinent and relative to all that we do until we no longer get out of bed in the morning.

Set on the turbulant, often deary, beautiful Oregon coast, it is a perfect book to curl up with on a rainy day or long evening. The interaction between the Texas relatives who come to help celebrate the deceased man's life made this displaced Texan a bit homesick.

Not only is it good, it's also clean. The language is decent, and the main characters are church going people who strive to live decent lives not marred by adultery or violence. Locke is himself a Christian, and he brings across a subtle Christian message without being superficial or preachy. There are no artificial conversion stories, but just the ordinary struggles of believers living in a corrupt world. The focus of the corruption that Locke exposes is the evil of legalized gambling. In the process of reading this mystery, you'll be confronted with some shockingly accurate facts about gambling, the corruption it creates, and the destruction it causes in the lives and communities of "ordinary" gamblers. Locke shows convincingly that because legalized gambling is a great money-spinner for the government, the authorities often turn a blind eye to the moral and social destruction it inevitably results in. Not only is "The Omega Network" a great read, but this good clean mystery will leave you with a new perspective on gambling. You won't be gambling by reading this book, because it's a guaranteed winner.

The puritan physician John Locke (1632-1704) is one of the greatest philosophers, and certainly the one who was the most influential on the American civilization. Locke's life and the context in which he wrote this book are presented in Ewing's introduction, however without serious philosophical considerations. Ewing still mentions Locke's willingness to defend Christianity against the intellectual attacks lead by the deists, and how much opposition Locke's The Reasonableness of Christianity received, in particular from the revivalist clergyman Jonathan Edwards, who accused him of atheism. Since Locke's book did not have any divisions nor chapters, Ewing has numbered the paragraphes and compiled an outline.

Locke first deals with the need for salvation and the content of the gospel preached by the apostles and Jesus. He then proceeds to a very lengthy analysis of the gospels (as someone said: "Locke has no mercy on the patience of his readers.") Locke defends the Christian truth with the miracles and the resurrection of Jesus, His indirect declarations of Messiahship and His fulfilment of the messianic prophecies. I was surprised to learn much from Locke's sharp analysis of the gospels, for example why Jesus did not reveal His identity directly during most of His ministry. Locke then answers some general objections (about the salvation of the unevangelized, etc.) In the last part of the book Locke points at some insufficiencies in the general divine revelation in nature (although Locke believed in the truth of such a revelation) and argues for the necessity of special revelation.

Locke's arguments may have been convincing in his time. But Locke wrote before the attacks of Hume against miracles or before the attacks of the liberal theologians based on the historical-critical method. Locke's argumentation would be incomplete for modern readers. These would be more helped by modern apologetics books. However, those interested in an analysis of Jesus' ministry may benefit from Locke's book, provided they are motivated enough to endure his lengthy style. Those interested in Locke's philosophy may benefit more from the edition by I. T. Ramsey (John Locke. The Reasonableness of Christianity. With a Discourse on Miracles and Part of A Third Letter Concerning Toleration. Introduced and edited by I. T. Ramsey. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958.) Ramsey has brilliantly introduced and outlined the book, has abridged the text, and also introduced and edited some of Locke's arguments about miracles.

Locke first deals with the need for salvation and the content of the gospel preached by the apostles and Jesus. He then proceeds to a very lengthy analysis of the gospels (as someone said: "Locke has no mercy on the patience of his readers.") Locke defends the Christian truth with the miracles and the resurrection of Jesus, His indirect declarations of Messiahship and His fulfilment of the messianic prophecies. I was surprised to learn much from Locke's sharp analysis of the gospels, for example why Jesus did not reveal His identity directly during most of His ministry. Locke then answers some general objections (about the salvation of the unevangelized, etc.) In the last part of the book Locke points at some insufficiencies in the general divine revelation in nature (although Locke believed in the truth of such a revelation) and argues for the necessity of special revelation.

Locke's arguments may have been convincing in his time. But Locke wrote before the attacks of Hume against miracles or before the attacks of the liberal theologians based on the historical-critical method. Locke's argumentation would be incomplete for modern readers. These would be more helped by modern apologetics books. However, those interested in an analysis of Jesus' ministry may benefit from Locke's book, provided they are motivated enough to endure his lengthy style. Those interested in Locke's philosophy may benefit more from the edition by I. T. Ramsey (John Locke. The Reasonableness of Christianity. With a Discourse on Miracles and Part of A Third Letter Concerning Toleration. Introduced and edited by I. T. Ramsey. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958.) Ramsey has brilliantly introduced and outlined the book, has abridged the text, and also introduced and edited some of Locke's arguments about miracles.

There is one great thought in this book, i.e. that the Web makes it possible for everyone to participate in the "great conversation", and that it is the summing and slicing of these conversations that will drive business in the 21st Century.

The authors are quite correct, and helpful, when they point out that in the aggregate, the combined preferences, insights, and purchasing power of all Web denizens is vastly more valuable and relevant to business decisions about production, quality, and services than any "push" marketing hype or engineering presumptions about what people might need.

Sadly, the authors' neither provide an integrated understanding of the true terrain over which the great conversation takes place, nor do they provide any substantive suggestions for how web content managers might improve our access to the knowledge and desires that are now buried within the web of babel. Their cute "tell a story" and equally cute advice to have big boxes for customer stories in the forms provided for input, simply do not cut it with me.

This book is a 5 for the one great idea, a 2 for beating the idea to death, a 3 for presentation, and a 4 overall because it was just good enough to keep me reading to the last page.

So finding the on-line Cluetrain Manifesto last year was a real pleasure. Here were these four guys with 95 wild-eyed idealistic theses for overthrowing the business world order--and setting up a new paradigm based upon (of all things) human interaction and conversation. I signed right up.

So you can imagine my delight when I found "The Cluetrain Manifesto" book had been published. I bought it in a millisecond.

Inside, you'll find the reflections of the Cluetrain's originators--in more detail, with more reflection than their Website provides. The Manifesto's background and philosophies are brought into a clearer focus--*not* crystal clear, mind you, but clearer than before. And it's a *very* enjoyable and provocative read.

It's not a flawless work. There's redundancy, for example, in the multiple essays within. Some chapters (Chapter 1 especially) are outstanding, others are so-so. One might even be called elementary. But there's always food for thought.

And don't expect to find some kind of "formula" or "strategy" or "plan" to prosper in the brave new world we live in. It's not there. In fact, such a plan, the authors remind us, would be *counter* to the Manifesto's assertion that honest human conversation is the key to success in the future.

But you will be stirred to find your voice and to add it to the voices of the revived marketplace called the Internet. Heck, you might even be inspired enough to try to help your company find *its* honest, human, authentic voice (rather than brochureware and doublespeak). And I think that's what would delight the Cluetrainers most.

This book is one of several that dramatically affected my life and career. I heartily recommend it!

As a senior manager of IT & statistical services in the public sector for over ten years I find that Locke et al make me ashamed for all the times I didn't tell suppliers that I would no longer accept their crap. I hope some of those suppliers are reading this book and taking heed because I'm sharing my copy with my colleagues and together we represent a not-too-shabby purchasing power...

I hope the message is clear; get a clue!

Like his idol Hunter S. Thompson, Locke's writing is all over the place. Uptight suits might find his prose amusing and cutting-edge, but to me it seemed like a lot of hot air. After almost 200 pages of random etymology, philosophy, and sociology in the vein of Robert Anton Wilson, but spliced with embarrassing dad humor, he finally gets to his theory, which is that companies looking to market on the web shouldn't think about marketing. Rather, they should build personal relationships with potential consumers, but still not push their products or services, since that would still be a form of marketing (one-on-one, or personal selling). As an example, he suggests that Ford pay employees to stay home and build web sites based on their own personal interests, such as organic gardening. And instead of linking Ford to their site, Ford would link the gardening site and encourage people to visit these underwritten - but not sponsored - sites. The hope is that organic gardeners might somehow become interested in Ford's products.

While he makes some good points about consumers' repugnance of all forms of online advertising, and the overall ineffectiveness of mass communication on the web, his solution doesn't seem to hold much water or make any financial sense. And even if a company did use its resources to underwrite completely unrelated web sites to create these micro-communities and forums around unrelated fields, consumers would STILL be distrustful of the company. No matter how much Locke tries covering it up with his "zany" writing style, the fact remains that anti-marketing is still marketing, and in the end, his theory would, in practice, appear even more dubious and dishonest than traditional marketing.

However, Locke does succeed at selling himself, and while I didn't find his "hey-look-at-me-I'm-not-wearing-a-tie!" shtick very entertaining, his charisma (or penchant for quoting dorky classic rock songs) will definitely win him over with the balding, stuffy suit set.

Just because you recognize that something is wrong doesn't mean you know precisely what right is. We all know that the torrent of spam that we are daily assailed with is the wrong way to market on the Web (how many of you have really bought anything that was so advertised). But while Gonzo Marketing does not spell out the precise ABCs of what is developing in this New World, he does a very exemplary job of talking about it's roots and realities. I think perhaps the most important single word that is used in both Gonzo Marketing (and The Cluetrain Manifesto) is "voice". The Net and it's derivitive, the Web, are forums for the individual voice to speak quietly but to a huge audience. It is this voice, this individual human communication that matters, because while we'll all trash a spam email within milliseconds, most of us will responed to a truly individual message from another human being. This takes the market back to what is originally was before it was usurped by corporations to mean masses of blank faces, and present it as the simple aggregation of people who wish to have discourse about their daily needs and perhaps exchange a few items for a few other items. Never mind that we're not really a bartering economy anymore, the character of that ancient market place is still deeply embedded in our psyches and most of us feel comfortable on that more personal basis.

So I say that you should buy the book if you are prepared to think for yourselves and project what Locke says onto whatever micro world you live and make money in. There simply are no books that can tell you extactly how to do it, although many claim to, but this book reminds you of lots of truths that you may have let slip into the sub-conscious realm, and once you have brought them back into view it is quite possible that you can apply Gonzo principles to whatever it is that you do with your life.

Just because you recognize that something is wrong doesn't mean you know precisely what right is. We all know that the torrent of spam that we are daily assailed with is the wrong way to market on the Web (how many of you have really bought anything that was so advertised). But while Gonzo Marketing does not spell out the precise ABCs of what is developing in this New World, he does a very exemplary job of talking about it's roots and realities. I think perhaps the most important single word that is used in both Gonzo Marketing (and The Cluetrain Manifesto) is "voice". The Net and it's derivitive, the Web, are forums for the individual voice to speak quietly but to a huge audience. It is this voice, this individual human communication that matters, because while we'll all trash a spam email within milliseconds, most of us will responed to a truly individual message from another human being. This takes the market back to what is originally was before it was usurped by corporations to mean masses of blank faces, and present it as the simple aggregation of people who wish to have discourse about their daily needs and perhaps exchange a few items for a few other items. Never mind that we're not really a bartering economy anymore, the character of that ancient market place is still deeply embedded in our psyches and most of us feel comfortable on that more personal basis. Locke even points out that Amazon is participating in his view of the current Net market by the very fact that it lets it's buyers review the books they purchase and thereby pass on to others a personal account of the value of the product.

So I say that you should buy the book if you are prepared to think for yourselves and project what Locke says onto whatever micro world you live and make money in. There simply are no books that can tell you extactly how to do it, although many claim to, but this book reminds you of lots of truths that you may have let slip into the sub-conscious realm, and once you have brought them back into view it is quite possible that you can apply Gonzo principles to whatever it is that you do with your life.