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Book reviews for "Pitt-Aikens,_Tom" sorted by average review score:

The Quotable I Love Lucy
Published in Hardcover by Metro Books (2001)
Authors: Stephanie Chizek and Tom Watson
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Who doesn't love Lucy?
"The Quotable I Love Lucy" is an absolute treasure! With hilarious pictures and quotes, how can one not love Lucy and the gang? The style of the book is great and the introduction is insightful. If you ever wondered what Lucy was saying during "Vitmeatavegamin," wonder no more, as they have that quote in here! I must have for Lucy lovers - I recommend.

A welcome giftbook for fans
With its informative introduction by Tom Watson, The Quotable "I Love Lucy" is a wonderfully presented, memorable volume filled with a superb selection of the best moments and wittiest verbal gags of a truly classic television show that has become an icon of American popular culture from the 1950s down to the present day (thanks to perpetual reruns on Nick At Night). Black-and-white photographs of the unforgettable Lucy and Ricky Ricardo spice up this hilarious selection of classic vignette quotes and mini-scenes. The Quotable "I Love Lucy" is a welcome giftbook for fans of one of the greatest comedy series of all time and a "must" for all Lucy fans everywhere!

Tottally Ausome For a fan of I Love Lucy !!!
If you are a I Love Lucy fan this is the book for you.
It has some of the neatest quotes, Funniest quotes, and your favorite quotes. It may be short but it is worth long time and effort. So this is the book for you Lucy fans !!!!!!!!


Rod Building Guide: Fly, Spinning, Casting, Trolling
Published in Paperback by Frank Amato Pubns (2001)
Author: Tom Kirkman
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Very Helpful
Although I had already built a few rods, when this book came out I jumped on it. I picked up a ton of info that made building futures rods much easier and much better. I rate this book very highly. The photos are full color and numerous and make understanding the 'how-to' very easy.

Very helpful
I had been wanting to build my own fishing rods for a few years. Tried once but didn't like the results. My wife bought me this book from Amazon.com and I got right in and used it to build another rod. This time everything came out just right. I credit the Rod Building Guide with guiding me over the rought spots and making sure I did things right. I found it very helpful and would say any new rod builder should not be without it.

Best I've read
I have several rod building books. Bought this one for my personal library on the subject. I think it is the best rod building book I have read so far. The color photos are great and really very helpful. I really don't see how they can sell it for less then... Great book.


Stock Options: Getting Your Share of the Action: Negotiating Shares and Terms in Incentive and Nonqualified Plans
Published in Hardcover by Bloomberg Pr (27 April, 2001)
Authors: Tom Taulli and Bruce Brumberg
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Employee Stock Options the Easy Way
I'm a programmer based in Silicon Valley and have received stock options over the years. No question, there is a lot of misinformation on the subject. Then again, the subject is extremely complex! However, when reading Taulli's book, things became much clearer. The sections on AMT were especially done well. If you want to understand your stock options, Taulli's book is a great choice.

Stock Options are Understandable for the First Time
Congradulations, Tom. Finally, someone has written a book that is understandable and readable for the financially saavy and not so saavy tech employee... This book contains information that is essential for (i) the employee who is interested in knowing the good and less than good about stock options and (ii) the executive and board who needs to correctly incentivize the employee base. Tom's book outlines the types of options available, how options work, and their tax and securities law treatments. The section on negotiation is particularly interesting and contains information not often available in a book directed at those of us who don't care to read a legal treatise. This book is well worth the read. Good luck and may your stock options be everything you hope them to be.

Good Guidance
I wish I would have read this book before I exercised my options, I would have paid alot less to uncle sam. If you want to make sure you get the most money for your options, I'd get a copy of this book. The tax implications can get complicated and Tom lends clear guidance and strategies.


Value Stream Management
Published in Paperback by Productivity Press (2003)
Authors: Don Tapping, Tom Shuker, and Tom Luyster
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An Excellent Tool for all!!
This book has helped in all areas of our business. We are incorporating it into all of our processes!! Wonderful training tool for any organization.

Great tools for Leaning your facility
This book gave me great insight to re-initialized our lean efforts. We have been so busy and got caught up in the value stream mapping craze and kaizen events, but little impact. This book did a superb job in laying out the eight steps, with all the forms, templates necessary to ensure sustainable results. Great work by the authors!

Great Selection of Lean Tools
There are a considerable number of very useful tools contained in this book that we used immediately. This book allowed us to put in a process of lean implementation, simple in nature, and very effective.


Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects
Published in Paperback by Dorset House (2003)
Authors: Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister
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Especially recommended for experienced entrepreneurs
The collaborative effort of Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk On Software Projects is a hard-hitting guide to braving greater risks for greater rewards in the exciting, challenging, competitive, and rapidly advancing field of software development. From advice on the pros and cons of risk management techniques; to successful value quantification; to tests for risk management and knowing when to go back to basics, Waltzing With Bears is a very savvy guide especially recommended for experienced entrepreneurs who know their specialized markets and want a better feel for when and what would be an acceptable risk in pursuit of marketplace success.

A must for software development managers
Risk is everywhere, so we cannot avoid it, only manage to deal with it in the best possible manner. In software development, the most valuable projects are always the most risky. Therefore, the decision to go forward with any project must include an honest assessment of the locations of the virtual land mines.
There are two general areas in which risk can be categorized. Some of the risks are known, either precisely or within a range of parameters. For example, the cost per day for each category of worker involved in the project is well-known. This type of risk is not difficult to manage, and most managers have a great deal of experience handling them, so very little of the book deals with them.
The second category are those risks that are largely unknown. These are items like the risk of mission critical software suffering a catastrophic failure to large, unexpected cost overruns. It is this category that is examined in detail in this book. Of course, the boundaries between these categories are extremely subjective and situation dependent. A small company with limited financial resources would consider a smaller cost overrun to be critical than a company more capable of taking a large financial risk.
After the initial explanation that risk management is necessary, the next step is trying to quantify the risks. This involves charts of likelihood of delivery time that resemble normal distribution curves. Using such charts allows any prediction to include some natural 'wiggle room', which eliminates one of the most recurring and frustrating problems. Development managers are commonly asked to give a date for product delivery, and that date becomes fixed in stone. Upper echelons are notorious for hearing only the 'we can deliver on August first' part of the message and ignoring the remaining, 'provided all the planets are in alignment, there is no snow in January and no one takes a day off' part of the message. Expressing the date in a diagram of this form means that it is impossible to see the date without also seeing the estimated range.
The authors have also developed a risk assessment tool called RISKOLOGY, which can be freely downloaded from the companion web site. While the tool is not described in complete detail, there is enough background for you to be able to use it quickly. Chapter 13 deals with the core risks of software projects. The five risks listed are:

* Schedule flaw.
* Requirements inflation.
* Personnel turnover.
* Specification breakdown.
* Under-performance.

None of these risks is any surprise to experienced managers, although including them was necessary and the authors do a good job in explaining them.
Chapter 14 puts forward a process for discovering risks, which is excellent and in the realm of 'how to learn what it is that you don't know.' It is this approach that will separate those who succeed from those who must resort to faking success. The greatest and most dangerous risks are those never considered as possible events. Catastrophe brainstorming followed by scenario analysis is the strategy that the authors put forward.
As a mathematician, I was pleased to see that the concept of probability is used to perform the risk analysis. Probability charts are used throughout the book to demonstrate the concepts and of course this more accurately describes our knowledge of the future. Nothing in life is certain, so the probability limits need to be placed around every event.
The software project without risk is so dull and uninteresting that no one with any talent would go near it. So, if you have talent, gear up by buying this book and plunge forward to take on the enormous challenges of making software that matters to the world.

Enjoyable and Valuable
Reading Tom Demarco and Tim Lister is a pleasure. It is so clear that these two authors set out to teach something they believe to be valuable, and all of their effort is directed toward making that valuable thesis accesible to the reader. There is no showing off, no saying, "Look how smart I am." Their books clearly say, "Our many years of experience have taught us some useful stuff and provided us with lots of valuable data. We have put a lot of effort into analyzing that data and we will try as hard as we can to help you understand our analysis. Our objective is make it as clear and as entertaining as we can," and they do. Their explanations are always clear. Their examples are invariably both helpful and entertaining.

What they have to say is always important. "Walzing with Bears" is no exception, and even if you should disagree with parts of the book, their arguments will force you to think about critical aspects of management that you may not have previously considered.

Reading the first few chapters, my only criticism was that they seemed to be oversimplifying some issues. Reading on, I realized that it was a deliberate and brilliant part of their teaching technique. In later chapters, the book carefully added the complexities that covered more and more of my early reservations in ways that made them easily understandable.

It's a terrific book.


After He's Gone: A Guide for Widowed and Divorced Women
Published in Paperback by Citadel Pr (2001)
Authors: Barbara Tom Jowell and Donnette Schwisow
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An important book for all women of all ages to own.
This is an amazing book which addresses issues you are either facing or may be facing in the future. The book offers insight from women who know from experience what to expect when you are faced with the unexpected- the loss of a husband through death or divorce. They bring honesty, humor and reality to a painful but very real life circumstance. I have given this book to family and friends with the assurance that I have done them a great kindness by sharing Barbara and Donnette's wisdom. I highly recommed this book to all women in all circumstances based on the knowledge that nothing in our lives stays the same.

If only this book had been available when my husband died!
I wish this book had been available when my husband died in 1982! It would have made things so much easier then, but the information is helpful to me as a widow even now. I bought two books ... one for me and one for my home town library. Alice Peterson, Keystone Heights, FL

An invaluable resource for women of all ages!
It's comforting to know where to turn for answers to so many questions. I'm impressed with the authors' thoroughness and depth of research. Thank you, Barb and Donnette!


Almost Like a Song
Published in Hardcover by McGraw-Hill (1990)
Authors: Ronnie Milsap and Tom Carter
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A DO NOT MISS READ!!
If you are a fan of Ronnie Milsap or just a fan of life in general, this is a MUST READ! Ronnie and Co-Writer Tom Carter, present Ronnie's life in a sometimes comedic and sometimes sad manner. Ronnis IS a true to life "RAGS TO RICHES" story and I personally am thankful Ronnie has been through everything he has in his life. It has not only made him what he is today but has caused me to reflect on my own life which has posed many "situations" for me to grow from. Ronnie is an awesome individual and if you want a chance to get away from all the "[stuff]" on television these days, this is a book for you. The man born blind in poverty in the mountains of N. Carolina, disowned by his mother because she thought his blindness was a curse from God, raised by poor but loving grandparents, sent to the State School for the Blind on welfare, turned out to have the IQ on the genius level. Ronnie tells of how fascinated he was the first time he experienced a commode when he was about 6 years old. Now his home probably not only has 7 or 8 of them but probably has heated seats as well. PLEASE, if you never treat yourself to another gift, purchase this one. It is truly a gift that you should not miss out on. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!

Donna Ashworth-Dallas, Texas

An American Success Story
Born blind in the poverty stricken Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina, Ronnie Milsap grew up to become a self-made multi-millionaire and internationally known country music superstar. His prosperous life proves in America that any dream is achievable. But his Cinderella-caliber transformation was not merely professional. Dismayed that her baby was blind, Ronnie's disturbed mother abandoned him. He was raised primarily by his loving paternal grandparents although his well-intentioned yet somewhat hapless father was a constant presence in his life. Today he has been happily married for well over 30 years and is a doting grandfather when not out on tour entertaining his legions of fans.

Attending a state-run high school for the blind, the talented youngster gained independence but was subjected to the unchecked discipline of certain thuggish teachers. In college he considered a career as an attorney, but wisely determined music was more his speed.

In addition to the typical biographical data, Ronnie expounds on numerous subjects. Politically speaking, he expresses outrage over the Supreme Court decision (recent when this work was first published) legalizing flag burning. The conservative patriotic principles he advocates are a welcome change from the usual show biz liberal diatribes. That's just one of many stereotypes Ronnie Milsap's life has shattered.

A MUST-READ book for all Ronnie Milsap fans!
I have always had great admiration and respect for Ronnie Milsap. He has been a true inspriration to me for nearly 25 years. My piano teacher knew how much a role model he was to me as a child, and she used that to keep me from giving up. After reading the book, my love, respect, and admiration for him is 5 times greater! The book is beautifully written with so much honesty, emotion, and love. It made me cry, and it made me laugh outloud! This man is a phenomenon that we could all learn a lesson or two from. "It Was Almost Like A Song" inspired me all over again! I haven't read a book with so much feeling since I was in high school; I couldn't put it down at night to go to sleep! No Milsap fan would want to miss this one!


Plain Talk
Published in Audio Cassette by Simon & Schuster (Audio) (1998)
Authors: Ken Iverson, Tom Varian, F. Kenneth Iverson, and Warren G. Bennis
Amazon base price: $16.00
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In Headlong Pursuit of a Shared Purpose...
Ken Iverson has truly earned the right to be called a "Business Maverick". In this book he explains how the culture he created at Nucor became "60% of their competative advantage". He explains how breaking down hierarchy and opening the lines of true communication in all directions can propel a business to success.

His unique, but successful, techniques at time agree with, and at times flies in the face of, McGregor, classical management theorists, and others who have studied management, communications and human resources.

In chapters entitled, "A Higher Cause", "Trust Your Instincts", "Destroy the Hierarchy", "A Simple Stake in the Business", "The Virtues of Smallness", "Ethic Over Politics", and others Mr. Iverson relates how you too, if you are willing to work hard enough at it, can "turn a confused, tired old company on the brink of bankruptcy into a star player...", while learning that "many of the so-called 'necessary evils' of life in corporate America are, in fact, not necessary".

Brilliant
This is a fantastic and priceless book, by a man who turned an almost bankrupt company around, to a company doing over $4 billion a year in business, with much profit. It's an inspiring book, that gives you faith in human nature...all you have to do is appeal to peoples' best impulses to get them to perform well and enthusiastically (the MANAGERS had to rescue a union organizer from the WORKERS, who wanted nothing to do with unions. Imagine that! WORKERS being hostile to the union representative, and MANAGERS, rescuing him from a hostile group!) This may be the greatest business book ever written, frankly!! I'm almost loath to recommend it, God forbid my competitors should read it!....

simple, effective framework for a profitable company
Ken details the mechanics of a simple, effective, decentralized framework that aligns the goals of the employees, management, and customers. Base salaries are below industry median. The bonus of a manager depends on the return on equity (capital + equipment + human) that s/he generates. Each team's bonus is tied directly to what they produce.

The higher up the manager (there are four layers including CEO), the higher the proportion of of paycut during down times.

Has simple effective metrics to monitor the health of each decentralized unit (half a dozen including sales, productivity, expenses).

A good mechanism to set goal and measure performance for a business generating tangible goods. Not sure how this could be applied to more intangible value added activities such as IT and software engineering


The Scrambler's Dozen: The 12 Shots Every Golfer Needs to Score Like the Pros
Published in Hardcover by HarperResource (04 April, 2000)
Authors: Mike McGetrick and Tom Ferrell
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A roadmap to rapid improvement
I have read a number of books and magazine articles over the
years, but none have given me insight on what shots I need to
concentrate on most.

This book outlines the twelve most important shots and
describes in detail, how to go about accomplishing them.

This book is making me a better golfer in record time!
I highly recommend it!

The Ultimate Players Manual
This is the ultimate players manual--great information in a concise and logical format. I have been searching for the perfect golf manual for years and now I have found it. Practical, insightful, brilliant in its' simplicity. Well done!

The Book to have on golf
If there is one book to add to your golf bookshelf, this is the one. There is something to learn in every chapter and each one treats a specific point. You not only learn the basics but he shows you how through pictures and then explains in details the different aspects: setup;the swing; the strategy and the swing thoughts for each and every shot he teaches. To make it complete and very functional, he even gives you practice strategies and fundamental drills.
All in all, probably one of the best books I have read on shot making and shot shaping.


Airliners Worldwide: Over 100 Current Airliners Described and Illustrated in Color
Published in Paperback by Specialty Pr (1997)
Author: Tom Singfield
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Good Overview of Aircraft Types
This book gives a great overview of many commercial aircraft and contains great photography of the different plane types. However, this book needs to be updated. Some of the aircraft featured in the book are no longer in service or are extremely rare. In addition, several new aircraft need to be added to the collection. I would like to see a new edition of this book. Overall, though, I enjoyed reading the text about the aircraft and viewing the photos. This book serves as nice reference guide for identifying aircraft.

potent little reference
Tom Singfield has crammed a lot of information and some very nice photos into this charming aviation hobbyist book.

The aircraft are presented alphabetically. The general specs and history of each aircraft is given. Finally, a useful list of operators of the aircraft is provided.

Singfield selected his photos with great care to emphasize the unique and distinctive identifying features of the aircraft. Among the curious aircraft variants photographed: a Basler turboprop DC-3, a DC-7 water bomber, and a "hushed" UPS 727-100.

The book is very well constructed, with a solid stiff binding.

A very handy airliners reference guide
A beautiful, compact reference guide for all the major airliner types currently in service. Very handy!


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