I saw this book at a small party and immediately orderd six copies. Christmas gifts for my folks and a hard-to-shop-for couple. The tins and packages are beautifully shot and reproduced. As a designer I actually am finding it to be a resource for great retro design and color combinations. There you have it... some really diverse reasons to purchase this wonderful book!!!

Interesting to find that this is the first book of its kind on the history of condoms and their packaging. Not only does it contain information the average person would never have guessed, it is useful to those into the history of graphic design. The tins are miniatue works of art in themselves, regardless of what they contained! The down to earth style of the text is easy on the reader as well. All in all a great bargain - the hardcover of the book in itself is worth the price of admission!

I could not believe the quality of this hardback book. Many pricing guide books for collectibles are printed on newsprint, and they are paperback as well. This book is top class all the way! I hope these guys keep coming up with revised additions, as new and yet undiscovered condom tins and boxes surface. Bravo!!!

O'Brien's title references what he terms the "half-truth" that the faculty is the university. His answer is, "of course, but ..." Drawing on his presidency at Bucknell, and his Hegel scholarship, O'Brien argues that an institution represents something else more difficult to identify but just as important: an ethos, a culture, a set of binding ideals, all of which are continually (re)created by the interaction of faculty with institutional tradition. While others like Donald Kennedy have also briefly noted the idea of a greater degree of centralized direction, if not control, O'Brien takes the idea much further both theoretically, and practically, by proposing specific faculty positions intended to strengthen in the long-term an institution's intellectual culture. Finally, O'Brien argues, in an academic version of Michael Porter's doctrine of "competitive advantage," that institutions ought to capitalize on their differences rather than accentuate their sameness. All in all, a provocative, insightful and, yes, even funny meditation on the relationship between institutional structure and institutional character.

I highly recommend this book whether you are a student, parent of a soon-to-be college student, are considering a career in academia or are just plain curious It is very well written, witty and highly informative, not to mention fascinating. Dennis has written other books and has a website ... Granted, I am a little biased (I happen to be his son-in-law), but I would still recommend this book even if he was not my father in law (Dennis did not put me up to this!). I always recommend it to my "academic" friends, especially when the subject of tenure comes up, which he discusses at length. He also discusses the history of the university, which I find very fascinating. All in all, I can't recommend this book highly enough! Excellent read.