Since 1977 the small group of North American Christian monastics, monks and nuns, have established exchanges with non-Christian monastics, principally Buddhists but also with Hindus and Moslems. Attempting to identify both similarities and differences in practice rather than examine dogmas, this Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (MID) group sponsored speakers, programs and publications, and eventually engaged in sending small groups of members to visit the exiled Tibetan monastics, followers of the Dalai Lama, in India, and brought representatives from India to visit American and Canadian monasteries.
The Gethsamani Encounter was designed to extend the mutual understanding these former programs had developed to a still deeper level. It lasted almost a week. Participants were restricted to twenty-five Christians and twenty-five Buddhists from all parts of the world. The site chosen was Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, a Trappist monastery whose most well-known member, Thomas (Brother Louis) Merton had died just twenty-five years earlier. He was one of a small group of pioneer Christians interested in Buddhism and died just shortly after having met the Dalai Lama. This confluence of place, history and dates made Gethsemani ideal for this meeting.
This book presents all of the Buddhist and Christian papers presented in multiple sessions daily. Often a group of papers would cluster around a particular theme (meditation; training) and would not only expose the common themes but especially the distinctive notes of each special group--different Buddhist lineages; various Christian groups. Presenters came from the U.S. and Canada, Europe, India, Burma, Cambodia, Japan and other areas giving presentations which inspired, informed and clarified. They also exposed questions and themes still needing more penetration. Consequently the contents of this publication are not only unique but they also supply a high level watershed from which further clarity and mutuality can emerge. The editors, themselves participants in the encounter, James Wiseman, OSB and Donald Mitchell are specialists who make the contents of the papers accessible to the uninitiated and informative to the specialist. This book is without parallel and is meaningful for both the person seriously interested in Buddhism, Christianity, monasticism and East-West exchanges and those who are unfamiliar with the material but ready to become richly informed.

The Gethsemani Encounter was perhaps one of the great overlooked religious moments in the past decade. In the hills of Kentucky, in the oldest Trappist monastery in the United States,monastics from all over the world gathered to dialogue,to learn,to agree and disagree.The meeting place was suggested By The Dalai Lama,who in a moving afterword says"And so for the rest of my life,the impact of meeting him will remain until my last breath."The him is Thomas Merton, who met with the Dalai Lama on his final journey through the east in 1968.The talks in this book are broken up into sections{Journey and Dialogue,Prayer and Medidtation,Method and Expierence, Growth and Development,etc.} with speakers from both Buddhist and Christian monastic tradition sharing their expierence and strength. Some of the participants are truly moving: Ven. Maha Ghosananda of Cambodia speaking briefly on THE HUMAN FAMILY,the dalia lama on THE BODHISATTVA AND SOCIETY,,PRAYER AS PATH by Pierre-francios de bethune`Mary Margaret Funk,OSB on Lectio DIVINA,and many more. An over used term, treasure trove is quite appropriate. This is a collection to return to, to glean ,to nurture the soul.TO Open This volume isto enter a holy place . Truly magnificent.

SET IN MERTON'S ABBEY IN TRAPPIST, KY, THIS BOOK FINDS THE BASIS AND SIMILARITIES BETWEEN TWO PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES THAT ARE USUALLY THOUGHT TO BE DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED. A NEW LOOK FOR MATURE RELIGIOUS THINKING.

Geometry! Clearly and Concisely Presented--Finally!

I am a high school special education/alternative education teacher in Oregon, working with special needs youngsters. Contemporary's "Number Power 4: Geometry" by Bob Mitchell offers an excellent, concise presentation and review of geometry. The book is an excellent resource as a first introduction to students of the principles of geometry, or as a review for students studying for their GED, SAT or even GRE. In fact, I have recommended this book for teachers who must take the CBEST for teacher licensure in Oregon!

The chapters are succinct, clear, and use real life applications and examples that students will find relevant and engaging. The pages in this worksheet format booklet are laid out clearly, very clearly, and are easy for the student to negotiate. After clearly presenting the beginning principles of geometry in short concise lessons, "Number Power 4: Geometry" gives the student plenty and frequent opportunity for them to check their understanding. This is one of the strengths that sets "Number Power 4: Geometry" apart from other textbooks. Here, students don't have to suffer through pages and pages of instruction before their comprehension is tested. Students will find the book engaging, trust me.

I recommend "Number Power 4: Geometry" without reservation! You won't be disappointed.

-John Bain

This book was a life saver for me!! I used to to learn geometry to study for the GRE. It was written at a basic adult learning level, and thus there remains little need for a tutor. The chapters are clear, short, and use real life adult examples!! A great resource!!

Chris P. Abilene, TX

Graphs, Tables, Schedules and Maps Students Can Understand!

I am a high school special education/alternative education teacher in Oregon, working with special needs youngsters. Contemporary's "Number Power 5: Graphs, Tables, Schedules and Maps" by Bob Mitchell gives the clear instruction and practice necessary for students to obtain the relevant information from graphs, tables, schedules and maps. The book is an excellent resource for students as a basic life skill or as preparation for the GED and SAT tests. An invaluable resource!

"Number Power 5: Graphs, Tables, Schedules and Maps" uses relevant and real life applications and examples that students will find engaging. The pages in this worksheet format booklet are laid out clearly, very clearly, and are easy for the student to negotiate.

"Number Power 5: Graphs, Tables, Schedules and Maps" gives the student plenty and frequent opportunity for them to check their understanding. This is one of the strengths that sets "Number Power 5: Graphs, Tables, Schedules and Maps" apart from other textbooks. Here, students don't have to suffer through pages and pages of instruction before their comprehension is tested. Students will find the book engaging, trust me.

I recommend "Number Power 5: Graphs, Tables, Schedules and Maps" without reservation! A great bargain for the price.

-John Bain

As with the other books in this series by Contempoary Books, Book #5 gets right to the point to help struggling students in extracting information and interpreting graphs, schedules, tables, etc. An excellent resource for Special Education or competency education programs. Well worth the money.

This is a really useful book for design engineers who need something more than just data sheet information on compounded plastic materials. It gives both the pluses and the minuses, so that it is not hype.

This is a must for any serious Britten scholar. Hundreds of letters and diary entries are included which tell the story of the composers life. To get a complete view, letters and diary entries of people surrounding Briten are also included. The overwhelming amount of footnoted material also includes a wealth of information.

This collection of essays, by a wide range of contributors, adds considerably to our collective knowledge of Gustav Mahler, his life and times and the cultural milieu in which he worked as composer and conductor, and of course his music.

The editors, as they note in the Introduction, provided very loose guidelines to the contributing essayists: Beyond refereeing the broad topics for inclusion, the editors largely gave carte blanche to the contributors regarding style and content. This "looseness of control" has resulted in a volume of both very considerable strengths (some of which I highlight here) and a few perplexing weaknesses and oversights which I allude to at the end of my comments.

The "logical bookends" of this volume are an opening essay by Leon Botstein, titled "Gustav Mahler's Vienna," and a closing essay by Wilfrid Mellers, titled "Mahler and the Great Tradition: Then and Now." The former sets the cultural, socio-political and philosophical stage of fin-de-siècle Vienna onto which Mahler entered, and the latter nicely summarizes how Mahler might fit into a continuum of musical composition and practice that preceded and succeeded him. (This new paperback edition also includes. at the end, two new essays, not present in the hardback edition, covering recollections of his daughter, Anna, and recently discovered Mahler "juvenilia" in the form early chamber music and songs.) In between these bookends, all of Mahler's music, and much about his life and times, and how he and his music were accepted (or not accepted) inside and outside Vienna, are covered.

The essays regarding Mahler's music are largely - and splendidly - informative, and provide alternative insights into the music not necessarily covered by the well-known analyses of Theodor Adorno, Constantin Floros and Henry-Louis de La Grange. (Interestingly, many of the music-analysis contributors reference Adorno's "Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy." Perhaps Adorno's time has come as well, some 40 years after his writing this difficult-but-epiphanic work.) But at least three of them are (to me, anyway) frustratingly idiosyncratic. Peter Franklin's essay on the Third Symphony ("A Stranger's Story: Programmes, Politics, and Mahler's Third Symphony") is heavy on largely-irrelevant minutiae and very light on certain matters of true import, such as the significance of the final Adagio of the work. David Matthews' "The Sixth Symphony," by his choice, largely limits his comments to the two well-known areas of conjecture/dispute: the ordering of the two inner (Scherzo, Andante) movements and the matter of whether the final movement should have two hammer blows or three. (I am personally in agreement with both of his choices, but that is largely beside the point.) And Colin Matthews' "The Tenth Symphony" is largely a technical analysis of the available raw materials of the work left by Mahler for realization by others but very little about what interests most Mahlerites regarding this final work: A detailed comparison of the various "performing versions" or "realizations" that exist.

Among the many personal "resonances" for me are the following: A finely-crafted analysis of Mahler's "Opus 1," his "Das klagende Lied" (but absent the fact that a splendid recording of the 1997-discovered Ur-text score has been made by Kent Nagano); (finally) a musicological connection between Mahler and Hector Berlioz, by way of how the widely-separated octaves (of trombone pedal tones and high flutes) in the "Hostias" of the Berlioz Requiem might have influenced Mahler when he was composing the first "Nachtmusik" movement of his Seventh Symphony; and a fascinating footnote to the analysis of the final Adagio of the Ninth Symphony, where some apparently reliable documentation is provided for Mahler's awareness of the famous hymn, "Abide with Me," the tune that always comes to mind every time I listen to this gorgeous hymn-like passage.

Elsewhere (and scattered throughout various essays) are frequent allusions to certain parallels between Mahler and Charles Ives. (They both wrote "music about music," incorporated "vernacular" music in their works, were almost-simultaneous "polytonalists" and of course contemporaries. The matter of whether Mahler had been aware of the music of Ives is put more in the affirmative than I've seen heretofore; hopefully this is the result of recent research about which there is more to follow.) Similarly, there are frequent parallels drawn between Mahler and Dmitri Shostakovich; the case for Shostakovich being the logical (and most significant by far) successor to Mahler is well-drawn without overlooking the obvious differences between them.

There is an intriguing chapter on some not-so-obvious parallels between Mahler and Debussy (although the overt pentatonicism of "late" Mahler is made elsewhere, most obviously in the essay on "Das Lied von der Erde"). And, for me, one of the best contributions is by Edward R. Reilly, in his essay on "Mahler in America."

The volume is exceedingly well-annotated, with liberal footnotes (many, such as the "Abide with Me" one, of considerable length), and, at the back, a full bibliography of source materials, a detailed index of works, and a general index as well. Clearly, a lot of work (both scholarship and "routine editorial") has gone into the preparation of this valuable resource.

The book is not perfect in all respects, at least from my own personal point of view. Biographical details are not its strength, but there are the volumes by La Grange and Blaukopf & Blaukopf to compensate. (Nonetheless, I would have liked to have seen a contribution by Herta Blaukopf, who is as knowledgeable about Mahler's Vienna Conservatory period as any.) But, as I noted at the outset, its very considerable strengths greatly outweigh its relatively minor weaknesses. If you consider yourself a Mahlerite, this book belongs in your library, alongside your copies of Adorno, Blaukopf, Floros and La Grange.

This concludes the 134-year history of the U.S. government's relationships with Alaska's native peoples, begun in Mitchell's first book Sold American. The political history of Alaska is an eye-opening story which should be read by any with more than a casual interest in the state: this focuses on Congress' settlement of Alaska native land claims from 1960-71, providing plenty of detail unavailable elsewhere.

Most businesses tend to grow for a while and then hit a point where they stall. "The Irresistible Growth Enterprise" focuses on how to get past a stall and use various growth enhancing techniques to get started again. The various things discussed in this book that cause a business to stall include Irresistible Force Stalls, the Directionless Stall (Where are we going and how do we get there?), the Wishful Thinking Stall (That's not the way I thought it would be), the Helplessness Stall (What do we do now?), the Defensiveness Stall, the Independence Stall (We can do it all), the Overoptimization Stall, the Cover-up Stall, and the Underestimation Stall.
The second part deals with Irresistible Force Management, how to determine the forces that affect your company, how to use them to develop a best practice scenario, and how to monitor results.
There are many good management books on the market today. Very few cover the problem of why a business enterprise stops growing and what to do about it to the extent that this one does. Because of this extended coverage of an often overlooked or marginalized area this is a recommended read for anyone wishing to jumpstart a stalled business or keep from getting into a business stall.

History is replete with companies done in by forces beyond their control. History also celebrates the rare examples of executives who turned these "irresistible" forces to their great advantage.

Can executives of companies see the wave soon enough, catch and ride (read manage) it to sustained growth, rewarding themselves, employees, customers and shareholders along the way?

In their new book, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise: Breakthrough Gains from Unstoppable Change, authors Donald W. Mitchell and Carol Coles lay out a road map for managers that, if followed, will allow them to take advantage of forces beyond their control. Authors of the popular The 2,000 Percent Solution, Mitchell and Coles show how CEOs can benefit from flexibility when they confront irresistible forces and provide a set of principles for shaping vision, strategy, tactics, management process and organizational structure.

The book identifies external factors and obsolete ways of thinking. For example, "companies that strategize only to optimize the forces when they are positive, will face grave difficulties when the forces shift directions," say Mitchell and Coles. A lack of understanding can lead to "inappropriate action or no action," the authors suggest in their book.

In separate chapters, they describe a wide range of stalls commonly faced by companies in a section called, Overcoming Stalls and Taking Actions.

These stalls include:

A lack of direction;

Wishful thinking that favorable conditions will return;

A sense of helplessness about actions to take;

A defensive reaction and denial of the seriousness of the forces;

Relying only on the company's resources to handle the situation;

Covering up problems and "throwing in the towel";

Being too independent and believing they can succeed;

Being overly optimistic about succeeding; and

Underestimating the impact.

Mitchell and Coles set out eight steps that will allow companies to manage these irresistible forces successfully:

1) Recognize how measurements can help your company identify and understand more about irresistible forces;

2) use your own leading indicators to anticipate shifts in irresistible forces;

3) identify the future best practices for locating, anticipating and adapting to change in irresistible forces;

4) extend your vision to accomplish best practices beyond anyone else in the future;

5) identify the ideal best practices for benefiting from irresistible forces;

6) determine how to operate close to ideal best practices for locating, anticipating and adapting to your irresistible forces;

7) enhance your people's ability to achieve the benefits of irresistible force management; and

8) repeat steps one through seven for improved effectiveness in using the management process.

Last, the authors urge readers to "embrace the forces," encouraging managers to "seek out the irresistible forces" as a basis for early action. Survival, growth, and personal opportunity are at stake and at hand. They lay out a course of action for taking the lead inside your company and mobilizing people.

A chapter personalizes the entire process for each reader's overall life.

robertlowe@mindspring.com from Atlanta , 5 July, 2000

The Irresistible Growth Enterprise is a breakthrough work and a millennium message from one of the truly gifted business minds of our times.

The perspective and information in this book is of equal importance to the CEO, CFO, Corporate Director, executive, manager, supervisor, sole practitioner, first time entrepreneur, or student at any level.

This is more than a 'how to' book yet you may use it to work through what you must do to grow, thrive, change, and survive into the new century. It is more than a management technique book, yet the techniques introduced and developed here may be used as a guide for any who must manage to manage into the turbulent and exciting times ahead. Among the 'irresistible forces' with which we must deal are such events as globalization, market fluctuations, economic surges and reversals, new technologies and their economic impacts, natural events - weather and catastrophes, demographic changes, and the myriad aspects of human unpredictability. Don Mitchell tells us that 'Most people see irresistible forces as random factors or inconveniences, but The Irresistible Growth Enterprise will instead show you how to use all those forces instead of trying to avoid them.' This principle, at once ancient and modern, is essential to both business health and personal development.

The principles and practices in this book are more than mere ideas. They are the culmination of practical gleanings, over decades, in close business and interpersonal relationships with an astounding number of the nation's top executives dealing with real-time irresistible forces.

The Irresistible Growth Enterprise is required reading if you wish to deal effectively with the geometrically increasing velocity of change and development facing all of us today. As Don Mitchell says, 'This multiplier effect will increasingly happen with all irresistible forces, and this is the key insight upon which you must act now.'

Robert Lowe - Author Improvisation, Inc.: Harnessing Spontaneity to Engage People and Groups Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer (2000)

The 2,000 percent solution is not limited to business! I am in the educational field and I found many factors in the 2,000 percent solution that apply to our schools. The Disbelief Stall and the Communication Stall pervade many of the K-8 schools where I have been a teacher and administrator. Teachers and administrators alike have become more receptive to researching "best practices" and they are beginning to "choose a colleague to coach." Change agents in school settings will gain focus, direction, and a host of important questions to ask as they read this book and plan for the future. After you read the 2,000 percent solution, hand it to another educator. You will learn a lot, laugh often, see some fascinating art, and liven up your faculty meetings when you offer ideas and opinions you have gained from this wonderful book!

In February of 1998, I attended a group work session where we used the process described in this exciting new book to identify where we thought our companies were potentially "stalled." A wide variety of businesses were represented at the session yet each participant could easily identify with common problems or "stalls" we all faced. The ideas generated for me at this meeting were outstanding. And, in fact, the strategy our company followed in 1998 was very much in step with the ideas and action steps created using this process. In 1998 our company successfully completed a Dutch auction that brought back over ten million shares at 65% of today's price; we successfully divested ourselves of a non-core business; we reduced our cost of capital; we completed a major acquisition; and our earnings increased dramatically.

The key message throughout The 2000 Percent Solution is to get rid of your bad habits and embrace change. The book helps suggest how to identify problems that are preventing success. Continual growth and success depends on continual improvement. The 2000 Percent Solution will help you accomplish this. Read it!

How often does a book you purchase get a quick read and then gathers dust and is soon forgotten? "The 2000 Percent Solution" is exactly the opposite. It is a great business book, but the lessons it teaches are more than business lessons, they are life lessons as well. I find myself returning to Mitchell, Coles and Metz for renewed inspiration regularly. Moreover the book is easy to read, and any chapter or part thereof can be read out of order, which makes it a good read for those times when we only have fleeting moment or two. Other reviewers have commented eloquently on the book's excellent content. I will simply say that if you are looking for a book to inspire tour business and personal life in the year 2000, I highly recommend "The 2000 Percent Solution".

"The Ultimate Competitive Advantage" provides business leaders with real-life examples and the rudder necessary to shift the course in a stormy, ever changing environment and find the most direct way to new opportunities. This is a useful toolset necessary to develop a winning business model in a globally competitive environment. The authors of this foremost book understand business models and how to make them a source of adequate competitive advantage. The primary idea of Don Mitchell and Carol Coles is simple and rather practical at the same time: improve the effectiveness of everything you do. The authors show how strategic innovation can emphasize your business from the stack and deliver stronger.

The book is well organized and the writing is clear and concise, all making for an informative and enjoyable read. It is an excellent book for a strategic planning point of view. It is an absolute necessity for the 21st century business owners and CEOs. The book is teaching you about Business Model Innovation and the ideas might become useful as your business direction changes. The book offers help to anyone looking to improve theirs chances for success. And it is quite readable. I highly recommend it for senior and mid-level managers, entrepreneurs, consultants, and business students.

Alexander Petrochenkov

Of all the books I've read on change management this is the most precise in its statement about how corporations need to manage the continuous innovation of their business model in order to survive and thrive in our global, competitive marketplace. Replete with real world examples of successful business model innovation, traps, and pitfalls, this clearly written book provides definitions, case studies, and "rules to live by."

Continually provide more benefits for your customers; ". . . business model obsolescence is the major unperceived opportunity for and threat to all businesses now" is the self-proclaimed "Big Idea" of this book. Indeed it is. From that theme, Mitchell and Coles go on to build an air-tight case for continuous business model improvement. And the business model is simply defined as the: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, and How Much for your product or service. But the simplicity of this concept of a business model should not mislead the reader. There is a significant amount of introspection and work that a leadership team must go through to really understand the answers to these questions in order to map where they are today and what they might do to positively change the model.

Mitchell and Coles keep our interest through real live case studies as well as tracking the growth of a child's Lemonade Stand business. The book is divided into four major parts: 1 The Most Productive Areas for Business Model Innovation; 2. Provide Sustained Benefits for All Stakeholders; 3. Expand Business Model Innovation; and 4. Pursue Higher-Potential Business Model Improvement. Each of these sections use real life case studies and hypothetical Lemonade Stands to illustrate the business change management principles. Those examples also provide hope and encouragement to leadership teams in all kinds of businesses that they are not alone in keeping change management from becoming an oxymoron!

After reading this book, you will want to keep it handy for reference, ideas for new paths to explore, and to loan to others who seem simply not to "get it!" What I appreciated most was the honest focus on providing what customers and end users really want in a product or service. Starting there, we can drive our companies to greater achievements by continuous business model innovation. Rarely do I rate a book a five on a scale of five, but Mitchell and Coles get that rating for The Ultimate Competitive Advantage!

Dave Kinnear, CEO, dbkAssociates, Inc.

The ultimate competitive advantage is defined as being the best at business model innovation. The winners will be masters of an ongoing business model change as only change is a constant in today's business environment. In fact we already meet some of the winners as the authors came to this conclusion via a ten year research program that looked for a common thread behind successes of 100 top performing companies.

The book offers one of the best sets of real life examples and cases in the recent business literature, all with insightful observations by the authors. The examples range from the smallest of businesses to GM's and Enron's of this world (and from one concise passage I learned about the business model fundamentals of the US steel industry turn-around). Also, there is a new look at the changing virtues of leveraging equity with debt and CAPM.

For me the most valuable in this book is the attention given to rules of dealing with a company's stakeholders. It's high time that stakeholders received this kind of coverage in a work on competitive advantage ! The 100 leading companies' innovations stemmed from deep interest in stakeholders needs. As the authors state - a bad business model will usually favor a few stakeholders at the expense of others thus causing cooperation to decline. If one were to structure the book in another way, alocating one chapter to what can be done for and with each stakeholders' group to enhance business model might be an option for this reader (customers, shareholders, employees, suppliers, lenders).

The book is a call for thinking innovation as an every day job. Clearly, if new business model elements are thought about and tested on a continuous basis there is a better chance that something of a breakthrough calibre will be decided even at annual strategic meetings.