For a volume that purports to be scholarly research from Harvard University, it incorporates preciously little hard facts or empirical data from the commercial retail industry, aside from the colorful graphics, it represents, at best, an amateurish take on a global economy in the form of bumper stickers rather than any form of serious analysis.

Mr. Koolhaas' customary "Firehose" approach to editing - massive amount of unedited images and unaccredited charts and information featuring slogans sufficiently amorphous as to allow readers to draw whatever conclusion they want. Harvard GSD (Graduate School of Design) students would tell you that the whole book is a somewhat cynical exercise for Mr. Koolhaas to use his academic assistants to produce "research" that attempted to justify intellectually what he was designing for the Prada stores in NY, LA, etc. (a "cash cow" for Koolhaas' architectural firm according to his chief assistant) But since Koolhaas is an established and bankable star, none of the participants are complaining. In the end, most of the essays managed to emphasize an approach to architecture that happened to coincide with projects by Mr. Koolhaas.

For example, while the essay "Depato" give a reasonably detail account of the development of Japanese department stores in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, but then it focused on design features such as the "Bunkamura" or cultural village, art galleries and roof gardens that some stores had added in order to attract customers to shore up declining business. (Koolhaas advocated adding lecture hall in Prada stores but was vetoed for taking up too much valuable retail space). The essay never examined, let alone proposed solutions to, the real cause behind the decline of department store sales - the rise of discount shopping during the decade-long economic recession).

"Captive-Airmall" amiably speculates on the pros and cons of spaces designed for efficiency and what it meant to operate in an highly impersonal environment. However, it failed to mention the real reason that gave rise to such environment - airline de-regulation that began in the United States which eventually turned airports into corporations responsible for generating their own revenues and thus jump-started the airport retail business.

Much like a fashion product by Prada, this book is very useful if you want to brag about how intellectually curious and, at the same time, up-to-the-minute-Wallpaper-hip you are at home or the office - it's the latest design accessory for the 1990s bubble economy. It is disappointing to see that even a respectable institution such as Harvard has succumbed to the forces of the marketplace.

If you work in retail management or are just curious (like me) about why and where folk shop, invest in this 800-page visual extravaganza. The key to survival with "Shopping" is page 27, where the contents are, and I suggest you turn over the page corner so you can find it easily. The rest of the book is text mixed up with a kaleidoscope of color photos, charts, maps, text panels, black pages, and color photos with white copy, etc, etc. The pace never slows down! Actually, it is not as bad as that because each of the 45 chapters starts on a spread and the right-hand page is always bright yellow with black type.

Naturally, the text covers all the big subjects, like Victor Gruen versus Jon Jerde (these are the guys you can blame/praise for all those malls) and everything else to do with shopping past, present, and into the future. I found very intriquing a chapter called Replascape, about companies that make artificial trees and shrubs for your local mall--and to keep up the pretense, in some locations, they are watered regularly. A large part of the book focuses on the U.S., but the rest of the developed world is not ignored. Shop till you drop in Europe, Japan, South America, Asia....

I would have liked an index in a book this size, but I still think the publishers should be proud that they have produced such an amazing book at a very affordable price.

Will that be cash or charge?

I'll start with the bad first: this book is too long, the essays are of uneven quality, and the layout is poor (if you are trying to read it, that is, and not just look at it). That being said, I think the overall product is excellent. This authors do not seek to answer questions but, instead, to raise them. Why is retail facing a crisis? How will advances in IT affect retail? What is changing about how we buy, what we buy, and why we buy?

The authors' premise is that shopping is a living entity, one with survival on its mind. Retail, they claim, has evolved as other beings have evolved: Some advances are foreseen while others come through chance, but all advances are in response to external forces. In the case of retail, the dominant relationship is between the shop and the shopper. As the shopper changes, so must the shop evolve, write the authors.

That this work is not a completed whole, but rather a piece where some assembly is required by the reader, is important in making this book work. The authors do not and cannot answer all their questions. The idea of "ulterior motives" - which teases at the implications of increased use of IT in retail and urban planning - is, to me, the central issue. The authors note the shift from "how does spacial design affect people" to "how does information design affect people". They note the importance of this shift for the future of shopping and present a history of retail as the vocabulary for which readers can begin to discuss these questions.

Because the authors have taken on the task of teaching the language of retail, readers may feel as if they are back in grade school English class - slogging through page after page of seemingly useless information that is not neccessarily connected to the next bit of information. However, if you spend some time playing with this information - looking at each bit of knowledge as building blocks that can be moved about and repositioned next to other bits of knowledge to uncover new and different patterns - this book comes alive.

This book breaks away from the formal movements that we see so many people associating with Tai Ji. It actually explains the philosophy behind the movements and what each movement represents. It is not necessary to do the movements in any particular sequence and the reader is given the freedom to express themselves in an individual way. The ancient Tao text translations are excellent and awe inspiring. Al Huang himself is charismatic and has a wonderful, dramatic, and inspiring presence. I highly recomend this book.

I love this book. As a Chi Gung practioner with over 30 years experience, a Shaman, and an Author (CHI GUNG: Chinese Healing, Energy, and Natural Magick), I would like to share that I think that this book is truly wonderful. It gently teaches a different perspective on Tai Ji, a view that encourages relaxation, spontanaity, and love. This book is about truly living in the moment and embracing life with a smile. Sure, there are a lot of purely technical books out there but I think that many of them actually miss the whole point of what Tai Ji or the healing arts are all about. What this book shows is that Tai Ji can be about having fun as you twirl in the moment with the wonders of childhood. Buy this book. It just might give you a fresh perspective on life. And with that, you can look at any challenge from a new angle and that's where creativity comes in. That is how this book has helped me to save the lives of others in crisis situations.

Too often Tai Chi today is either an exercise form, or a strenuous martial art. It is neither of these - and both. This book manages the catch the breath and depth of tai chi in an enlightening and enjoyable manner. Timeless and imaginative, I recommend it!

This is a good start for parents and students looking to generate that initial list of candidate colleges. The Princeton Review balances the normal statistics with author and student narrative logically grouped by category. This provides a good feel, however subjective, for what you should find on the critical personal campus visit. Especially helpful are student ratings of professor interest and accessibility as well as summaries on the quality of life. Students rate their school as "what's hot" and "what's not" on such criteria as dorms, politics, Greeks, alcohol, food, registration, etc.

This book helped us get past the "view book hype", and prepare specific, sometimes pointed qustions to asked administrators and staff during campus visits with our son. It pays to be an informed and aggressive consumer. The guide gives equal attention to the "usual suspects" -- Harvard, Rice, Stanford, Duke -- as well as emerging or "quiet quality" schools like Truman State, Valparaiso, Santa Clara and James Madison. On the down side, some student annecdotes are stale (repeated from last year's edition) and predictable (love the faculty, loathe the adminstration). It would also be helpful to have found information on schools with programs for the learning disabled. Overall, Princeton gets a narrow nod over Fiske because of its format and organization. It's fun to read, informative, and arms you with insight to take to campus.

Last year I wrote an extensive review of the various college guides. Our daughter was then in eleventh grade and just beginning her serious consideration of colleges. Now she has heard from all her schools (accepted at 8, waiting list at 1, rejected at 1) and an update seems appropriate.

The Princeton Review guide is probably the best condensed book for a quick overview. They have improved their format slightly from 1999, though most of the text of their descriptions is the same. However they do give a flavor for the political orientation, difficulty getting in index, academic prestige, student to faculty ratio, and quality of campus life.

The Fiske guide is also useful, though my own view is that he tries to say only nice things about each school.

The ISI Guide to Choosing the Right College has definite strengths and weaknesses. The strength or weakness depends on your philosophical orientation. It takes a center right political view and a traditional academic view. It therefore praises schools with a core curriculum and a minimum of political correctness and criticizes institutions which have few or no required courses and a left leaning tendency. However, they make their views fully explicit, so the reader can adjust according to their preferences. The greatest strength is that it names actual professors and lists their courses. Thus these can be avoided or sought after as the student sees fit. Most other guides stick to generalities and avoid specifics.

Again I strongly endorse Marty Nemko's You're Gonna Love This College Guide. See my full review for details. The strength of this book is that it gets the student to think in terms of big versus small, urban versus rural, highly competitive versus high quality without cut-throat competition, etc. It really helped our daughter know what to think about on her tour of colleges.

A few more tips. We found it extremely helpful to look at colleges during spring break of eleventh grade, and again in the fall of twelfth. The essays are VERY important. We are sure that our daughter got in to two excellent schools on the strength of her essays -- and indeed an admission officer from one of those schools specifically told her that after she was accepted. And do whatever you can to get an interview. We have no scientific proof, but it is simply human nature to feel more enthusiastic about a real person whom you have met than a mere bunch of papers. The schools our daughter got in to were all ones where she interviewed. The waiting list school was one where she did not interview. Draw your own conclusions.

Good luck. We'll revisit all of this when our next child starts the process in a couple of years.

Searching for the right college is an overwhelming task. The Princeton Review guide is the best of several books we purchased because it is well organized and because it includes (sometimes uncomfortably) frank comments from students--not the admissions office spin on the school. Each of the featured colleges has a two-page spread in the book. Basic statistics are listed in sidebars on either side of the spread, so if your high school student accumulated only 1,100 on the SATs you can eliminate certain schools right away. If you prefer small schools, the stats show you school populations (with a demographic breakdown) so you can stay away from the large institutions where professors barely see the undergrads. Across the top of the page you find the address, telephone and fax nubmers and Web address. Tuition costs are easy to find in the sidebars. Some schools you're interested in won't be in this book, but most will, although there appears to be a clear East Coast bias. The editors are very honest about the process they go through to determine which of the 3,500 colleges and universities make the cut. Some are eliminated simply because they would not allow Princeton Review editors to interview students. What are they hiding? If you buy only one book to help you find the right college, this should be the one.

I liked the way this book was done. Once again the Chung Kuo series manages to capture my attention. However, i feel that David Wingrove lost something in writting this, and the end of the last book. Some aspect of realism or such was lost.

Wingrove brings us one step closer to the final chapter of Chung Kuo with Book 7. The pace quickens dramatically with this volume, and the true nature of the opposing forces in the universe becomes clearer. I was impressed by the significant development we see in central characters, and the final collapse of the civilization we met in Book 1. At the center of it all, Kim Ward and Ben Shepard continue to be fascinating and clearly opposing characters. Their development over the past six books -- never having met -- and the positions they represent come to an interesting point in this novel. Days of Bitter Strength delivers the promise of this series at its best.

I have also just finished Book 8 in the series (in an imported hardcover edition) and believe fans will not be disappointed with the climax of this brilliant series.

Wingrove brings us one step closer to the final chapter of Chung Kuo with Book 7. The pace quickens dramatically with this volume, and the true nature of the opposing forces in the universe becomes clearer. I was impressed by the significant development we see in central characters, and the final collapse of the civilization we met in Book 1. At the center of it all, Kim Ward and Ben Shepard continue to be fascinating and clearly opposing characters. Their development over the past six books -- never having met -- and the positions they represent come to an interesting point in this novel. Days of Bitter Strength delivers the promise of this series at its best. I have also just finished Book 8 in the series (in an imported hardcover edition) and believe fans will not be disappointed with the climax of this brilliant series.

Although significantly older than this text, I would suggest that readers look for a copy of 'The Aerodynamic Design of Aircraft' by Dietrich Kuchemann (Pergamon, 1976). Although not particularly up to date in terms of the advent of complex CFD methods, Kuchemann's text is an essential summary of the progress of analytical aerodynamics, and it's experimental underpinnings, from Gottingen in the Ludwig Prandtl era, through to the technology of the mid 1970s.

A well written introductory book on aerodynamics . Advanced printing technology also adds to the book`s qualities .However , this is not the book for someone who wants to excel at aerodynamics .Like other more recent books ,It aims for medicore level.For example, there are no expansions of advanced topics for the curious student.Also a subject of practical and historical importance like complex potential & conformal mapping is omitted. Summary : If you are new to Fluid Dynamics ,buy it .If you intend to be a real scientist ,you should look for Karamcheti for the incompressible part ,and Shapiro for the compressible part.

Don't waste your time on this nonsense. Kyung writes as if the only important theology is post-1960 liberation theology. Such drivel is not unusual from a professor at Union Theological Seminary in NYC (anti-traditional, blah blah blah). But Kyung's work is shoddy scholarship at best. Makes a person wonder why James Cone was so eager to give it a good review...

I have read this book several times and always find new insight out of Chung Hyun Kyung's work. "Struggle to be the Sun Again" gives voice to Asian and Asian-American women who are academically and spiritually doing work in the theological field. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in exploring the theological challenges for Asian women in the church.

This book contains the 300 Tang poems in both Chinese and English. The translation is nice and can assist English-reader to appreciate these famous ancient Chinese poems. It would be nicer, if the translator has even included the old stories behind certain phases. However, since there can be so many different possible interpretations of different terms, it sure is difficult to do so. After all, to fully appreciate the poems, one must be able to read them in Chinese, while the English translation can be an assistant only.

This book is slightly a bit too rough and the author did not attempt to give the reader a rigorous understanding of what is continuum mechanics. Formulas are given without further explaination why. However, for those who wish to pass the exam but dont really want to know more, this is a good choice.

Please, if you have a choice of textbooks, do NOT buy this one. I have a feeling the author knows nothing of eCommerce, yet was given 80 references, told to mash them together as non-sensically as possible and fire the result off to the publisher.
I've worked in eCommerce for a number of years and this book is a total waste of time and money. Many "industry terms" used do not exist. The author contradicts himself on a number of occasions. Many of the charts and illustrations are good for a laugh. I truly feel sorry for people who have this book as their introduction to eCommerce. You're going to come away with a lot of mangled/antiquated theories, and a bunch of "facts" that are just plain wrong. I'm sorry to say I had to memorize all of this junk in order to get an A in my course. As soon as I handed that exam in, I made a concerted effort to forget everything I read in this text.

The new edition is very current (the title even has "2002" in it). It covers practically every imaginable topic concerning Electronic Commerce. The general organization of the book is also good. For example, each chapter states objectives up front, covers them, ends with a summary, and then provides a list of key terms, questions for review & discussion, internet exercises, and team assignments. The glossary in the back is especially useful. So, for classroom use, it's a good text.

However, there is way too much detail, case studies, etc..., that makes it a very monotonous book to wade through. It would be much easier to read and more effective if it was condensed down (a "Reader's Digest version"). It has countless references to web site examples and "see more" sources, but to a fault, as it slows down reading. There are also graphics, diagrams, and tables throughout the book, but many are too detailed and others just add "more material" and not more value.

If you want a lot of information, this book has it -- but unfortunately with all the excitement of reading an encyclopedia.

I am a big fan of the tech books of E. Turban. His Decision Support Systems & Intelligent Systems was my first intro to his spin on tech topics. He and his co-authors have put together a really nice guide for management still in the "chin stroking" mode on what to do with E-Commerce. It is also a great textbook for undergrads/grads in a business school. Check out his table of contents--it hits all the bases to help management avoid the black holes and pot holes to make a smooth transition into the new economy.This book is a great place to start.

Considering the reputation of the primary author, I found the book to be ponderous to read and seemingly focused more on what the authors wanted to discuss than what might be really useful to students and those practicing M&A. The authors should have sought a more appropriate balance between theory and practice. This tome is weighted in favor of theory. It seems to spend more time addressing societal issues and issues of government policy than addressing the mechanics of how to plan for and implement transactions. In fact, only the last few pages of the book deal superficially with an approach to doing M&A.

The book also assumes substantial knowledge of accounting, finance and economics on the part of the reader. The dearth of examples also hinders the readers ability to readily understand how to apply complex concepts explained in torturous paragraphs of prose. It would have been helpful to use more illustrations to communicate concepts that are difficult for those of us that don't have Phds to understand.

Thankfully, there are other books that are far more helpful in explaining both theory and application of M&A. I have found Mckinsey's book on Measuring and Managing Valuation to be a much better guide to understanding how to apply complex valuation techniques. Integration methodology is well explained in Marks and Clemente's Winning at Mergers. For an excellent detailed overview of M&A, see Depamphlis Mergers Acquisitions and Other Restructuring or Weston's other, more recent book on M&A.

The book is really only useful for those interested in a literature survey, discussion of public policy, and somewhat tedious discussion of theoretical concepts.

On balance, this book provides a good overview of the subject and of recent academic studies. However, it is often theoretical and "ivory-towerish." There is relatively little that really instructs the reader about transactions are actually done. A great deal of time is devoted to discussing why they occur, but little practical insight is provided as to the challenges and issues that must be resolved. This book may be suitable for someone who is curious and interested in reading about M&A but provides little guidance for those interested in learning how to undertake transactions.