Peter J. Hatch, head of gardening at Thomas Jefferson's beloved plantation, Monticello, offers an authorative and edifying look at the orchards and fruits grown historically and today at this beautiful Virginia estate.With much information -- both historical and practical -- the reader is taught much. And has a unique opportunity to know better not just Thomas Jefferson, the man and statesman, but Thomas Jefferson the consummate gardener.Beautifully photographed and illustrated, it's an elegant addition to any gardener's coffee table or library. And for the serious fruit grower or Monticello afficionado, a must.

This is the book that every nurse that is caring for HIV/AIDS clients should have as their foundation resource. Peter Ungvarski has brought together an outstanding group of contributors to make this a "bible" for the practitioner that is a novice to the practitioner that is an expert.

The text is truly all inclusive, in my opinion. It covers all aspects of aging from infancy to older adult. It delves into the world of the psychosocial and neuropsychiatric dysfunctions. And, Mr. Ungvarski and his contributors delve into the needs of special populations, i.e., men who have sex with men, older adults, injecting drug users, transgendered/transsexual persons, and commercial sex workers to name a few.

Mr. Ungvarski and his contributors go on to discuss alternative and complementary therapies and the issues that arise with implementing these therapies. They discuss the issues of culture and ethnicity and how it relates to HIV/AIDS. And, they discuss legal and ethical issues and how they play a role in the world surround HIV/AIDS.

As a practitioner, this is the foundation I use. I highly recommend it as the resource for HIV/AIDS!

Thomas J. Peters wrote this article in 1979 when he was still a consultant with McKinsey & Co. In 1982, after writing the super-bestseller 'In Search of Excellence', he became one of the best-known management gurus.

This article builds on research from Henry Mintzberg, which is summarized in the Harvard Business Review-article 'The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact' (1975). In that McKinsey-award winning article Mintzberg concluded that executives "move in a fragmented fashion through a bewildering array of issues on any given day; in fact, fully half of their activities were completed in less than nine minutes." But in this article, Peters explains that this behavior has its 'silver linings'. He discusses findings from McKinsey & Co. research under four headings: (1) Not enough choices - Senior managers get only one option rather than a set of fully developed developed choices. The advantage is that the one option is in accord with senior managers' preferences and this option is probably shaped over time by the managers. (2) Not enough time - Time is fragmented; issues arrive late, fully staffed. Each fragment can used to convey preferences and provide an opportunity to set direction. Peters also claims that "lateness is relative; each slight modification of the current option becomes a strong signal about what the next one should look like." (3) Too many filters - Bad news is normally hidden. But reviews and comments on good news provide a communication channel for management to share their priorities with those down the line. (4) Too much inertia - Major choices take months or years to emerge, which will result into a consensus that requires minimal correction. In addition, with a large number of choices in the hopper, decisions will show leaders' directions. "This reconception of the top management task requires hard thinking about what is and what is not achievable from the top." So what can executives do? Peters argues that they can shape business values and educate by example. "Top management's actions, over time, constitute the guiding, directing, and signaling process that shapes values in the near chaos of day-to-day operations."

Great article by Tom Peters in which he shows that the reality of management clashes with decision-making theorists and time-effectiveness experts. But he shows shows that this is not all bad the news. He uses four headings to prove his points, whereby he uses (as usual) realistic and simple examples. I recommend this article to all people interested in management and leadership. Peters uses simple US-English.

"The Sacred Mushroom Seeker" has been selected for listing in "Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy." http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy

For fans of both Spider-Man and the X-Men, this isn't one you want to miss! From Spidey's first encounter with the original five X-Men to his later adventures with the other members of the team, this has it all, and then some. Written with a great sense of humor and the characters, this is a real keeper!

Tom Peters tells us that he can boil his entire management philosophy down to one sentence: "Crazy times call for crazy organizations."

The new marketplace in one word is "fashion." Every market is becoming a fashion market. "That means: fickle, fleeting, ephemeral, faddish, and unfair." Peters says you can thrive in the marketplace if you'll:

"Free the human imagination . . . Get close to and serve the customer. . . Customize products and services . . . Abandon everything; continuously reinvent yourself.. .Access the brainware around you. . . Know the front line . . . Demolish the monolith. . . Create teams that allow people to express their personalities."

Peters says a corporation today must be "curious." Don't expect the personnel in the personnel department to hire curious people. Peters says HR people operate by this unwritten rule:

"Thou shalt not hire a person who has an unexplained nanosecond in their life past the age of three."

They want the person who maintained a 4.0 grade average through graduate school and "has not had an interesting thought in their entire life."

They don't want any people who drop out of college, spend a year and a half in Europe, and offer no explanation. That, says Peters, is just the kind of behavior to look for when you're ready to hire curious people. He adds: "Hire a few genuine off-the-wall types. Collect weirdoes."

Peters says he is totally serious about this: "This is coldly logical stuff." Nobody disagrees that markets are weird, "but how are you going to conquer weird markets with stuffed shirts?"

I liked "In Search of Excellence" but thought the concepts (& certainly companies) didn't stand the test of time. I read "Liberation Management" with some trepidation.

My initial reaction on this book was, "Tom's gone off the deep end, he's doing this just to be provocative" - that's a good enough reason to read this book, but I wouldn't have rated it well just based on that.

If you look at today's business environment, he really wasn't a radical. Ideas that he plugged (Turn all work into a project, outsource, turn everything into a profit center) don't really seem so crazy. His mantra of speed certainly fit the period we just went through. His companies (example: EDS) even did better than prior books.

I've read all of Tom's books - if you want one to guide how you manage and lead, this one is it...

A fantastic book with mind-blowing detail and scope. Introduces (and complements with research!) many of the important 'management' topics that have gained popularity in the last few years. Which is impressive considering the book was written 8 years ago!

Topics include: Network Organisations and other non-hierarchy-based organizational models, Networked Markets, Knowledge Management, reduced 'mass'-marketing, etc, etc, etc...

It's impressive that he has been able to capture many of these trends BEFORE the proliferation of the World Wide Web.

Also preempts some of his own more recent movements, like the plain-English movement and the Wow! Project movement that advocate categorization in terms of 'wow!' and 'yuck' projects.

His latest '50List' books are much more digestible and prescriptive - if that is what you prefer.

This set of 3 books by Peters (Brand You50, Project50, ProfessionalServices Firm50) has changed the way I think about my work, job, and career for ever. Every time I read a few pages, I go back to work with a passion and a commitment for and to WOW! that I never thought existed in me. Tom Peters has changed my world for the better. They are worth the money even if you just read one page.

MY review of  BRAND YOU 50, Professional Service Firm 50 and Projects 50:

First of all: This is again a new transition of Toms' work. I miss the pictures as in Circle of Innovation, which makes this somehow less-crunchy, but unquestionably pure-Tom Peters.

The format is new (aka small size to love n hate!, 3 in a set,etc) using 2 colors (red n black) and (as always) jam-packed with emotions.

The books are typed with chock-full of MOTIVATED wordsmithing and FULL OF AFFIRMATION !!!!!! mark, hightly adrenaline-written, and offcourse purely TOM PETERS.

Toms traditional scholastic work of In Search of Exellence has changed into many phases of writting style (Liberation, the Wow-Seminar, and the TOME - Circles of Innovation -which is the best ever business-book to me). He is growing from one good scholar into **Managemet Geek uber-Guru**. More entrepreneurial than ever, and ALWAYS in the CUTTING EDGE!

One at the SIZE of Tom Peters would definitely have admirers (i m one, so i might be pretty biased!)  and haters. What we all can not deny is his Clear! influence in the business world.

Materials are put in numbering (50+ of the most important topics to Tom), often overlapping, tons of very2 personally opinionated shoutings ( i love loud voice! ) , and very often difficult to digest in one sitting (so reread and reread). It took me 2 weeks to finish the 3 books.

These books are ABSOLUTELY worth reading, learning, absorbing and enjoying. Go buy it, at amazon p-l-e-a-s-e!

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Those of us in white-collar America will all be well-served to listen critically to what Tom Peters has to say in this book. In a format that is as to-the-point and energetic as his seminars, Tom has given us a pocket-sized (well, just slightly bigger than the average pocket) collection of usable ideas that could mean the difference between the death of the salesman as we know him today and the birth of a thriving Brand that in Tom's words produces work "worth paying for." A must-read for anyone who (a) wants to have a job tomorrow and (b) wants a job worth having.

Passed CIW exam 1D0-420 & 1D0-425 scoring 90% for each.
I found the book very easy to read & a concise Study Guide (at times maybe TOO concise). The Site Design-Part 1, covered all the exam objectives with good explanations. However I felt that the E-Commerce - Part II, fell short of covering 2 aspects of the exam objectives, namely Catelog Design & relating OPI-OBI standards.

All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone striving to pass the above CIW exams.

A very concise must have book that condenses the material down into what you really need to know to obtain high CIW grades. It helped me pass the Site Designer exam with a 93 and E-Commerce with an 83. The Assessment Test at the beginning of the book gave me a very accurate look at what I needed to concentrate on but I read every page too. Especially helpful were the chapter summaries, exam essentials, and key terms at the end of every chapter which exactly pinpointed what I needed to learn. Also, the questions with answers at the end of every chapter were very exam like and perfect for practice exams when not near a computer. I took the book everywhere. But I also spent many hours with their Sybex EdgeTest Engine on the included CD simulating the exam until my scores were passing. I tried out the included flashcard feature, too, but much preferred the multiple choice format. Since this is their first edition, it does have some typos and a few questions with errors but they were very easy to spot and fix. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and to Amazon.

I used Online Law as a reference for my E-Commerce project at the community college. It covered all the important topics in great detail. The book is organized like a textbook, so it is easy to find the information you need. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in doing business on the Internet.

Any book on "online law" that was published in 1996 is going to include _some_ things that are out of date. Nevertheless this volume has held up extremely well. And it was written by a group of attorneys who know their stuff in both law and technology.

The coverage is thorough. A short introductory chapter explains what's "new and different" about online law; then a second chapter gives an overview of the legal issues that affect e.g. websites and e-commerce.

After that, the books breaks out into subheadings, each including multiple chapters on specific topics. Part I covers information security; Part II, online transactions; Part III, intellectual property rights in electronic information; Part IV, the regulation of informational content; Part V, the regulation of online conduct. As if that weren't enough, there's an appendix that provides a quick overview of cryptography. (If you think you might actually need to work with the stuff, you'll eventually want to invest in Bruce Schneier's book. But this is a good intro.)

As I said, some of it is a _little_ out of date. There's a lot of talk, for example, about modifications to the Uniform Commercial Code that were under debate in 1996; and of course any book written in 1996 can't take account of, e.g., the Digital Copyright Clarification and Technology Act of 1997, let alone the final outcome of _New York Times v. Tasini_. But the underlying legal issues haven't changed much, and this volume is still about as good an introduction as you'll find.

If you want a solid grounding in the law relating to information technology, supplement this book with Jonathan Bick's _101 Things You Need to Know About Internet Law_ and you'll be in good shape. If you want to specialize in this field there are other books you'll want too, but by the time you need them you'll know what they are.

Few people can lay claim to having created an industry. TomPeters can.

Tom Peters is widely credited with having created themanagement guru industry. Before him it is said that "management thinkers wrote articles in academic journals, gave the occasional seminar, and worked as consultants for a few large corporations". The biggest blockbusters sold under five hundred thousand books.

'In Search of Excellence', co-authored with Bob Waterman, is Tom Peters first book and sold over 6 million copies. Its success surprised their colleagues at McKinsey, who had laughed at the idea that Peters and Waterman would keep the royalties, "should the book sell 50 000 copies".

Two decades later, 'In Search of Excellence' is still one of the most readable management books. The eight characteristics of excellent companies, a bias for action, close to the customer, autonomy and entrepreneurship, productivity through people, hands-on values driven, stick to the knitting, simple form and lean staff, simultaneous loose-tight properties are all still relevant and still ignored today. It is written clearly, painting vivid pictures with anecdotes and examples from real companies.

Peters went on to become a megastar in the field of management entertaining, able to charge up to $80 000 for a one day show. The management guru industry is estimated to exceed a billion dollars and management books, including several by Peters himself, now regularly find their way into the best seller list. Peters'later writings have sometimes inspired and sometimes puzzled a new generation of managers.

This book is a classic. Great companies struggle to remain on top over an extended period. But the lessons learned endure. END

This is the book that launched the management guru business, as well as the popular management genre. Previous management authors such as Peter Drucker wrote academic oriented tomes for buisness executives. Tom Peters wrote for the masses.

The book starts with an introduction explaining the problems in the economy (this was the early 80s, when fear of Japan Inc was rising) and why this abstract concept of "Excellence" was needed. In many senses, the book's emphasis of "What's Right in the US" is really it's strongest selling point. In the context of a world where America seemed to be losing it's way, the book provides a rallying cry for places that America is doing things right.

The book the passionately covers general management caveats, such as "Stick to your knitting" with examples of companies providing extensive focus on their core competencies. It is important to note that Tom Peters does not claim to be a great management theorist here - his claim is to capture examples of companies who have figured out "how to be excellent". This is consistent with his academic training - an engineering background with a Phd in Organizational Behavior. He's not developing new business models here, only capturing what others already know to be true.

So how does it hold up over time?
Well, if you believe the naysayers, many of the supposedly excellent companies have gone belly up. Peoples Express airline? If you believe the Tom Peters website, his companies have still managed to beat the S&P 500 over the past 20 years.

Bottom line - The book is still valid. Closeness to customers is still as important as ever. Companies are learning they do need to stick to their knitting. This is a very entertaining and influential book. It's worth reading for the insights, as well as the chance that your customer has read it too. :-)

This is an excellent and useful book for anyone wanting to understand how to manage a company or organization well. Built to Last is similar and more rigorously researched.