Mike Basch has done a masterful job of explaining how FedEx and other companies have been successful by understanding their customers and consistently providing a service that is truly responsive to the customer needs. Basch clearly and concisely identifies the customer culture of these organizations through insightful illustrations and provides guidelines for others to follow. I especially like his creative definition of the organization's CEO - Customers, Employees and Owners. The book serves as a wonderful reminder to all of us in business that our number one priority is to meet the needs of our customers.

The Customer Culture should be mandatory reading for anyone in business or thinking of going into business or management. The book not only reminds us that without Customers we have no business, but shows the reader how to keep the customers they already have while adding more. Mr. Basch guides the reader through time proven ideas of how to build a customer base, but more importantly cites examples of how these ideas where put to use in real world situations. Customer Culture is a top down approach for anyone at any level of management on how to build a more customer responsive and thus a better business.

The great thing about this book is that Mike didn't do that "consultant thing" of over-stuffing hsi book with a bunch of useless graphs, tables and such. He actually tells a story, or several of them. And each of them both entertain and educate.

As the CEO of a new services marketing company, I've gotten an incredible amount of clear and usable advice from this book... that I can apply! Many business books leave you in "quadrant quicksand". When you're building a company, you need solid advice. You need to know what people who've been there before did to solve the common business problems you encounter. You need the comfort of knowing that you're not the first company to struggle with what seem like insurmountable obstacles.

We like this book so much that we use it as a gift for potential new customers. For [the cost]we can give another business person something that he'll get real value out of. Even if they don't become our customer, hopefully they'll profit from Michael Basch's wisdom and improve the way they do business.

If given the choice, I suspect that most people wouldn't really want to go back and relive those tumultuous, confusing years of adolescence. But wouldn't it be great if you could do it, knowing what you now know as an adult? You'd probably worry a little more about a few things, a lot less about most things, and you'd certainly have a lot more fun! That's what writer Michael Lund has done through his first novel, "Growing Up on Route 66." We get to experience all the intimate thoughts, embarrassing situations, comedic escapades, and triumphs of teenager Mark Landon and his friends, through the eyes of the adult Mark. Some things have changed since the 50s, and perhaps today's teenagers, sadly enough, aren't quite as naive as Mark. But his struggles and questions are still universal, and you'll have a great time reliving your own adolescence as you read about Mark's experiences. I wish I had known what those guys were thinking when I was Mark's age, and as the mother of two teenaged boys, I think I understand them a lot better after reading this book!

While William Frank (Farmville Herald 12-22-00) speaks of the undeniable "moral content" in Lund's "novel of initiation," this reader, on the other hand, would argue that the novel fits more comfortably in the genre of the Antibildungsroman, a niche in the literary cavalcade heretofore filled by a few notable works, most prominent of which would be The Tin Drum of Gunter Grass. Here, Mark Landon, the midwestern Everyyouth, is enveloped by a repressive sexual environment which conspires against his sensual enlightenment in such an overpowering manner that his growth (or non-growth, as with Grass' Oskar) is best described as a hopeless status of sexual cluelessness until it flowers in--or, better yet, bumbles into--the unexpected climax described on pp. 256-58.

Lund's humorous conclusion, hinted at as early as the introduction, lends credence to the assumption that Landon will not change in any palpable way, but, unlike Oskar, whose stunted overall growth was at least partially compensated by a sexual development nonpareil, will remain largely unenlightened until the dawning of his middle age, when a belated epiphany of what had been going on around him his whole life finally sinks home at a time at which, ironically, he's too old to do much about it. The novel, however, does hint at the relevance of several as yet unexplored fields in Landon's life, such as his war experience and his subsequent embrace of the mysteries of Anglicanism.

Perhaps, an implied sequel will reveal whether this Everyyouth does at some belated point develop into an Everyman, and might also provide answers to such burning questions as whether Marcia Terrell, the novel's Everygirl and a refreshingly original character, overcomes the burdens of the same repressive environment by taking Route 66 to some pre-Title-IX form of the WNBA, or some other road equally appropriate for a liberated daughter of the American Midwest. We will wait and see.

Lund's second novel in the Route 66 series continues to impress--he takes up the teenage years of his protagonist Mark Landon with a great deal of sensitivity and insight, and lots of humor. As the last reviewer pointed out, even though this novel is very particularly set in the midwest of the 1950s, anyone who has gone through the teen years, or is going through them now I presume, will find connections with the story. Landon's narrative voice is particularly endearing: a bit self-conscious, always aware of the vagaries of memory, but always, too, trying to identify as exactly as possible how his world was shaped and why things turned out the way they did.

In Route 66 Kids, Michael Lund has done an outstanding job of capturing all of the nuances of maturity. As his protagonist, Mark Landon, continues to learn about sexuality through his experiences with his long-time object of affection, Marcia Terrell, he also makes other realizations that come with age. He sees his parents in a different light and he comes to recognize that small-town life is not always 'hunky-dory.' Because Lund treats these serious experiences with just the right amount of gentleness and humor, his second novel in the Route 66 series is delightful for readers of all ages. While some of Mark Landon's experiences may be particular to the 1950's Midwest, anyone who's been a teenager can relate to the sense of discovery that pervades the novel.