We were going on a trip to see the Llano Estacado and the canyon in west Texas.This book gave the trip so much dimension and understanding at how hard the life was for the explorers and the pioneers in this harsh land.Very cleverly written,holds one attention. Wonderful

Using historical writings of early explorers, the author captures the mystery and magic of the great Llano Estacado or "Staked Plains" that begin in West Texas and extend north and west. Particularly amusing is the efforts of early railroad surveyors to find underground water at the edge of the Llano (aka the caprock) only to miss one of North America's largest aquifers (the Ogalla) by a matter of miles and in some cases yards.

[Review by Larry Blumenfeld, Blumenfeld & Aswsociates, Post Office Box 2831, 660 Circulo Nomada, Tubac, AZ 85646-2831, (520) 398-3371, published in COUNCIL FIRES, The Publication for Western Americana Enthusiasts, Vol. 8, Issue #1, January, 1998, p. 16-17.] E1 Llano Estacado: Exploration and Imagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, 1536-1860. Written by John Miller Morris. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, First Edition ($39.95). El Llano Estacado is an extremely well written new work of Southwestern History, brilliantly revealing the historical core and heart of one of America's most history-packed regions--the mesaland of the Southern High Plains in Texas and New Mexico. From the Canadian River in the north to the Edwards Plateau in the south, from the Pecos River in the west to the awesome canyonlands of the Red, Pease, Brazos, and Colorado Rivers in the east, these 50,000-square miles of what is commonly referred to as "the Llano" are here chronicled over a period of 300 years, revealing the history, cultural grandeur, and mythic wonders of this special ruggedly beautiful land. A knockout read for both historians and buffs alike, Morris's new book is his song to this unique environment, revealing, melding, and analyzing a diversified series of Spanish, French, Mexican, and Anglo-American explorers and adventurers and how they made their mark on this remarkable land. The book opens with an examination of what is known as the Lost Coronado Trail, pursuing the question of where did the Coronado Expedition go in 1541. What follows is nothing short of a breakthrough analysis of what they saw and how they remembered it as revealed through their personal accounts and journals. The second part of the book, which deals with the Llano Frontier, continues its unique approach to the study of the three centuries of Spanish exploration and imagination following Coronado. Here we revisit this extraordinary land through the eyes and imaginations of the conqueror, Juan de Onate, the accounts of the French explorers, Pierre Mallet and Paul Mallet, and the travel diaries of trailblazers Pedro Vial, Jose Mares, and Francisco Amangual. Part Three then explores and analyzes "the invention or discovery of the Llano through the Anglo imagination," including the "prose of the poet Albert Pike, the grand deceits of Alexander Le Grand, the reasoning of Josiah Gregg, and the legendary collapse of the Texan-Santa Fe Expedition" as chronicled by George Wilkins Kendall and Thomas Falconer. Together the author analyzes what he calls the "American rhetoric of romantic discovery." The Great Zahara, the last of four parts, deliciously delves into the "perceptual approaches of classic U. S. Explorers James W. Abert, Randolph B. Marcy, A. W. Whipple, Andrew Gray, and John Pope...." Powerful, unusual, stimulating, and nothing short of brilliant, El Llano Estacado is one of the finest works of cultural and mythic history of a region I have ever read. Morris has penned a great work of both history and imagination, pushing the boundaries on historical scholarship to limits that I would have never thought possible. This book should change the way history is not only written but perceived. You must read this mmagnificent book!!

I have used this book for two years during Advent to read aloud to my family as we finish dinner. My 12 year-old at first thought it was silly, but she is always captivated by the stories. I like the blend of fiction, nonfiction, sentimental, and compelling selections. We have learned about Christmas for some Civil War soldiers, read some old classics such as The Gift of the Magi, and discovered some new authors we like. I highly recommend the book as a way to combat the secular focus of Christmas, without being preachy.

In his book From Coronado To Escalante:The Explorers of The Spanish Southwest Dr. J.M. Morris told the story about Don Francisco Vazquez de Coronado's journey of 1540 to the present-day Southwest, and skillfully depicted the origins of this expedition. He used the accounts of the previous Spanish conquistadores like Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro who before Coronado organized their "entradas" and subjugated the mighty Aztec and Inca empires. The author has also drawn the images of the people who participated in these adventures by portraying their ethnic and social status, and what motivated them to endure hardships such as fatigue, thirst, cold, and heat in the terras incognitas. As Dr. Morris followed every footstep of the Coronado conquistadores across the vast territories of Northern Mexico, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Kansas, he educated the reader about the types of landscape they encountered. The author not only pointed out the geographical terms of the landscape such as the Continental Divide, the Great Canyon or the rivers of Sonora, Pecos and Rio Grande, but he also linguistically enhanced the characteristics of that environment by providing the terms used by the Spanish explorers themselves like despoblados,"desolate, cactus-strewn wastelands", and the Llano Estacado, "Staked Plains",a part of the plateau streching across Northern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle, to name just a few. The author introduced the reader to a variety of Indian cultures that the Coronado expedition encountered in its way. "The Zunis, the Opatas, the Hopis, the dwellers of the pueblos in the Rio Grande Valley, the Querechos of the buffalo plains, the Teyas of the barrancas and the Wichitas of Kansas" provide evidence of a diverse world of the America's indigenous population. Besides this ethnic diversity, Dr.Morris exhibited various attitudes of how Europeans were perceived by the Indians. The title From Coronado To Escalante is a timeline during which the power of the Spanish conquistadores declined (since gold was not found to be abundant) and the ascent of the Catholic Church missionaries began. Where the magic and attraction of the riches were gone, the abundance of the Indian pagan souls prevailed. Friar Silvestre Velez de Escalante and his small group in 1776 opened a new era in mapping the landscape of the Southwest that resulted in creation of more missions in that area, the monuments to the legacy of the Catholic Church of Spain. Dr. J. M. Morris book provides a focused, comprehensive narrative that makes the reader open the map of Mexico and the present-day Southwest in order to plot Coronado's trail as he or she reads about the Spanish explorers' adventures in search of gold, glory, and fame.

For those who have a keen interest in Texas history or the early istory of the Texas Rangers, this book is a must-read. For those with a general interest in American history, "A Private in the Texas Rangers" offers an intriguingly honest and informed focus on the life of a 1880s lawman, one that is only possible by a diarist of the past and a skilled historian of the present.

Morris's second major work is a solidly based insider portrait of the Texas Rangers in their transition from the Old West (exploited by Hollywood) to the New West -- an industrial and agrarian society which reshaped Texas. Indeed, the transition has been so thorough that for many denizens the conflicts between plains indians, incursive Hispanics, and Anglos prior to the coming of the railroad are probably only known through cinematic references. The laconic entries -- by the only 19th century Texas Ranger who kept a diary -- provide Morris with the structure for a wide-ranging history.

The book expands from the diarist to the fellow rangers of Company B, then to the surrounding land and communities. There are informative and broader references to government, both State and Federal, and to social movements such as labor disputes and historical forces. Most mportantly the laying of railroad track through the Texas Panhandle and Rolling Plains region sewed it into the fabric of the national community.

The daily life of Private Miller, despite incidents of drama, is more convincingly focused on the drudgery of the effort required to impose order and the rule of law where it had been relatively rare. As one proceeds through the entries and the accompanying annotations, the slowly accumulating details of the life and times of the diarist begin to provide a richness of vicarious experience, a recovery of a "lost world," and one that is rarely achieved in historical writing.

You might be curious about what the title of this book refers to. It¡¯s rather simpler than you might guess. In a common vocabulary in business, it refers to the ¡®radical innovation¡¯. Then, you might infer that the 3rd generation R&D should be the incremental innovation. Yep. You¡¯re right. But those conventional terms don¡¯t fit completely into what authors argues. There is sufficient reason to coin such neologisms. The argument of this book goes like this. Traditional market research tends to deal with explicit knowledge. Focus group, survey, structured interview, all tackle what is pre-definable or expressible in word. But could such approaches spot the next generation product? authors question. No. customers can¡¯t put into words their gut feeling needs. They could spot it only when it appears on the market. The real breakthrough in product development, more often than not, comes in unexpected way. Thus, authors pose the question, ¡®How we should manage the uncertainty?¡¯ Put in other way, ¡®how we should manage the innovation?¡¯ R&D or product development must include incremental innovation. But in this turbulent environment, it¡¯s not enough. To be the leader in the market, not follower, one should ride ahead the tide. Then the question of R&D should be the radical innovation. Break with the identifiable trend. Then what product should be devised? All R&D begins with the product concept. But now the concept should be based on what customer¡¯s gut feeling or their tacit needs. Don¡¯t make what customer wants today. Make what they want tomorrow. At this point, you might retort: ¡®Yep. You¡¯re right. But it¡¯s easier to be told than to be done. How I could do so?¡¯ Here comes the knowledge management. Customers¡¯ tacit needs tend to be buried in noise of day-to-day information flow. There are numerous reasons for such filtering out. But all in all, to be sensitive to that kind of info, the authors maintain, is to manage the organization innovative. Knowing is not doing. Doing needs the capability to do. Then innovation requires the capability building. But it¡¯s not that simple to build up. It must face resistance inside the firm itself. Radical innovation tends to be the capability-destroying one. so developing innovative product usually comes with organizational innovation.
Above is the problem authors pose to us. I think the better title of the book is ¡®Strategic management of innovation¡¯. This book is not about the specificity of R&D, but about how to manage the firm innovative. Overall tenet of the book is so close to Nonaka & Takeuchi¡¯s ¡®The Knowledge-Creating Company¡¯. But this book is written not for academic researcher but for managers in the field. Points are made in graphic way with various case studies by authors. Nonetheless, it lacks the depth of Nonaka & Takeuchi¡¯s book. I recommend to read this book with Nonaka & Takeuchi¡¯s.

The book starts out with theoretical constucts and eventually uses examples to show their relevance. I found the authors' style of writing rather awkward. The organization of the material also makes the book somewhat difficult to follow. However, the well researched material presented is worth buying the book.

Authors Miller and Morris have nailed the impending transformation of R&D from its historical, product-centric past to its emerging knowledge-centric future. In addition, their focus on 'discontinuous' and 'fusion' innovation promises to lead the way for industry, in general, whose R&D functions typically produce less than one new product innovation per decade and whose new products, when they are produced, tend to fail in under four years. The authors' explicit embrace of knowledge management is also welcome, as the value of most companies now tends to rest more on the weight of their intellectual assets than on so-called 'hard' assets. Finally, this book's focus on distributed, enterprise-wide innovation signals the tearing down of R&D's overly centralized and compartmentalized profile in most firms, and offers strong support for the view that innovation should be structured as a distributed, whole-firm social process, not an administrative one. I highly recommend this book to readers interested in R&D, innovation, knowledge management, intellectual capital, organizational learning, and sustainable innovation.

The authors seem to walk the line between stating the obvious and dispensing outright bad advice. On more than one occasion, they cross that line with reckless abandon.

First of all, the book is geared towards newly minted Ph.D.'s or ABD (All But Dissertation) graduate students who plan to enter the academic job market. The authors seem completely ignorant of the fact that in many disciplines, particularly the biological and physical sciences, Ph.D.'s first hold postodoctoral research positions for 2 - 5 years before entering the market. I cannot find a single reference to the word "postdoc." Thus, the book completely ignores anyone with a science degree, and all of the advice concerning "timetables for your search" and the advice to "have your degree in hand" is useless.

Secondly, some of the advice in the book is dubious, at best. The section on cv construction states:

"If you worked prior to attending graduate school at jobs you now consider irrelevant, you may summarize them with a statement such as 'Emmployment 1992-1994 included office and restaurant work.'"

To which my response is, "What the hell for?" If the work was "irrelevant," it has no business on a cv. Period. Unless, of course, your goal is to give the hiring committee a good laugh before tossing your cv into the rejection pile.

Don't worry, it gets worse. The section on writing a "Statement of Teaching Philosophy," which almost all liberal arts schools require, is all of one paragraph long. The authors' best advice is to "try to look at statements written by others in your department as well as those written by applicants to your department, if those are available to you."

Here's an idea: instead of using the last 19 pages of the book as appendices (also known as "filler"), why not actually give some EXAMPLES of teaching statements? I didn't spend money on a book just so I could ask other Ph.D.'s for samples from their application packages!

The section on research interests is equally inane.

The bottom line: If you're a liberal arts major, then maybe you'll get something useful from this book. If you're a science major, then buy "Tomorrow's Professor" by Richard Reis. It's three times as long, and about a hundred times as useful.

It is a must-read book for any academic job applicants. Make sure you read it before you prepare your application materials. It will surelly save you a lot of time. It is really helpful in my job searching.

The earlier in your graduate career you obtain this book the better, since the section on planning your job search gives great advice about positioning yourself as an attractive candidate well before you start applying for jobs. I found the guide an invaluable companion over the seven month period that comprised my job search. The sample vitas, cover letters, and statements of teaching philosophy were especially useful, as was the extensive section on interviewing at conferences, on campus, and by phone. The tone was reassuring but realistic, and the advice was helpful both in conceptualizing aspects of the search (e.g., think of the interview as a conversation in which the evaluative aspect is made overt) and as a series of friendly, pragmatic tips (e.g., don't check luggage when flying to an interview; bring an escapist novel to read at the hotel). The book also contains sensible discussion of how to negotiate an offer, how to handle illegal or simply bizarre interview questions, what to wear, issues surrounding dual-career marriages, and after you've gotten a position, how to handle your new academic responsibilites and secure tenure. I recommend this book to everyone who aims at an academic position, and in the future, I will recommend it to my students!