This book is meant for those, who are research eyed and plan well before whatever they do. I have come across many a times, people asking me questions what it makes to be successful in SAP career and whether it is time for them to join the band wagon of SAP Consultants (based on the demand-supply position). I regret that I was delivering lectures at that time, instead of asking them to refer to this book. This book contains quite a few good points that are essential to be successful in SAP career.
Positive point: This is the only book available on SAP Career guidance.
Negative points: (1) this book was written in March 1999 and not updated thereafter. (2) The data are all old; most of them are dated 1997 & 1998. (3) Forecasts about SAP market growth and job opportunities in the new millennium are missing.
With new dimensions of SAP emerging such as BW, APO, CRM, etc and availability of many Industry Specific (IS) Solutions and the actual BIG market (money spinner for SAP Consultants) for SAP has dried up, the SAP Consulting career guidance book certainly needs an update.
Thanks for reading

For a European SAP consultant like me the book is very helpful. You receive a Northern American view on the issue, which is different from the Central European view in some aspects (especially what you can earn in the US).

For me personally the following aspects are of special interest: 1. What makes the successful consultant? 2. How much can you earn? 3. What are the interesting modules a consultant should know (it's nice to get to know that CO is a sexy stuff). 4. Does job hopping make sense? 5. What are arguments for a job change?

The reader gets to know the authors' view on these topics, and this is helpful to plan or to manage a career.

This book shoots straight. Don't read this book if you are gold digging. Do read it if you want to know what is going on or what is about to happen in the next few years in SAP. The book takes you on a virtual journey in preparation for the real journey through SAP consulting.

The purpose is; "We wrote this book because we believe that there are many people who can make a real contribution to the SAP field . . ." (p65). And they let the cat out of the bag on page 30; "The best way to get into SAP is still to be in the right place at the right time . . . the next best way is to . . ." (read the book for yourself). The real secret to becoming an SAP consultant is on pages 72-73.

There is a recurring theme of knowledge transfer and training throughout the book: "A professional with clear-eyed business knowledge . . . a knack for teaching . . . and empathy." (p21) " . . . but the most successful pay attention to the 'soft' communication skills involved in project management, training, team-building and knowledge transfer." (p37) "The key phrase now is 'knowledge transfer'" (p 56) "The Queen's English" (p69) ". . . the ability to express what you know . . ." (p69) ". . . think communication skills PLUS." (p76) "References count more for SAP candidates than in most other sectors of business." (p85) "You may find it necessary to educate the client . . ." (p92) "Those who have done and can teach SAP should be paid as much or more than when they are doing, but will not be." (p114) ". . . a transfer of knowledge is the greatest service a consultant can provide." (p135) ". . . consultants who are not certified are finding themselves at a disadvantage." (p145) "You may lag longer than you wish on a given assignment, but there could be gold waiting down the line for you if you take advantage of that lag time to . . . learn." (p159) "We do believe that strong communication skills and a solid business understanding are necessary for all who succeed in this business" (p192) "Continuous career improvement?" (p229, these are the final words of the last chapter).

Welcome to Germany. I trained some German SAP guys in London many years ago as R/3 was just coming out. Not in R/3 but in project management and software consulting skills. A word of caution. Go big. At least initially. The Germans have a love of scale and scope that is reflected in their industries. Their finances. Their software paradigms.

Your doing skills are a function of your being skills. In other words, what SAP can do is a function of what the Germans are. Engineers. And so, when it comes to reengineering, you can't go past SAP. Actually, Enterprise Resource Planning. Which is a subset of Enterprise Project Management. In other words, by the time you restructure the organisation to function on a project-by-project basis, something that is extremely difficult in a large organisation, but very profitable for a multibillion dollar company, you will have sorted out the enterprise resource planning. This is why SAP stresses the concomitant reengineering that is integral to any SAP implementation. This explains the SAP storm. Directors finally saw a business return, both savings and higher profits, from their IT systems and they went for it. The benefit for the Board was that they regained the agenda from the techies. By rolling in SAP into their IT systems, directors were rolling out the techie agenda from the board. They finally found a way to connect business sense to IT spend.

The authors stress the importance of Implementation experience throughout the book. And implementation experience is about Delivery, which is a function of who you are. Or as the authors put it; "Who are you?" (p17). This partly explains why it is so hard to become an SAP consultant. You have to be the 'right person' in the right place at the right time.

My criticisms are thus: The font is too small.

In conclusion, this is a book for the Pro by the Masters in the field. Even the contributors are among the best in the business. If you think it's easy giving career advice, try it sometime. The authors are to be congratulated for their honesty. This book gets a gold medal.

Acupressure points work. This book is clear and provides
simple techniques to press those aches and pains away. You
don't need to sit there all day with throbbing sinuses or
a major headache. Flip the book open to the right page,
give yourself a couple minutes to press the points involved,
and you'll feel better in no time.

We witnessed our hostess on a trip to China use accupressure points on a fellow traveler having an asthma attack. My teacher was accredited by the state of California to teach acupressure to RNs. I think this is the finest book of its kind for the laymen and recommend it or give it as a gift quite often.

I love this book! I use it to help with relieving pain and tension in myself and otheres. I use it as a reference of what to do and where to do it when helping people. My massage therapist got me hooked on the book. She uses it herself in her practice and shows people the book so that they can help themselves as a preventitive measure. Some places you just have to have someone else do, but for the most part the points are easily reached. It has very good illistrations and directions on how to find the correct point. I know of three other people who have purchased this book since having work done on them and being shown the book. I think it is great.

This book contains some beautiful artwork. Lots for the little ones to look at while you read.

Once again the circle of life is completed by the salmon of the pacific northwest. This is a cumulative story about the journey of the salmon from natal stream to ocean and back again. Parents nourish children who leave home to return to nourish their children.

Pictures a deeply colored and beautifully detailed. Would probably work best with slightly older children rather than younger. Would make an excellent classroom discussion book.

This story of the salmon life cycle is written in cumulative verse, like "The House That Jack Built." Starting from "This is the stream in the forest," the verses accumulate information as the eggs hatch into alevin and fry, while maintaining the lyrical flow of that stream. Then the smolt travel downstream to "an estuary wide" and the turbulent ocean. When the salmon receive the instinctual message to return home to spawn, the poetry of their journey is reversed: "... up the river with the tide, past the estuary wide ... obeying the voice of instinct's call, they leap a ten foot waterfall, to reach the place where they were born, bruised from the journey, weary and worn."

Again they arrive in the peaceful shady pool "filled with water, clear and cool, that flows in the stream in the forest." What a perfect way to demonstrate this cycle of life!

Illustrations saturate the pages with color. You'll feel wet from the flow of the cool stream, the splash of the waterfalls! Endpapers and an appendix add even more scientific information, as well as contacts and ideas for citizen conservation efforts.

Trading Reality is OK.

The story is about a Brit financial-type who takes over his murdered brother's start-up in Scotland's Silicon Glen. He is forced to deal with the conflict of honoring his brother's wishes and his own mercenary instincts.

The bond trader turned entrepreneur reminded me of Po Bronson's last two novels merged into a who-dunn-it, but without the humor. Merging the bond trader and high-tech startup entrepreneur together and layering that on top of a mystery was too blatant a play at a info-novel for me. And it was too predictable. Finally, there were some quirky things about the story. No marital relationship of the story's characters past or present either worked-out or was working out. And the final love-interest did not appear to imply any commitment. Hmmm?

This book is OK, but there are better things to read.

I do not read many fiction books, but I was recommended to Trading Reality. I could not put it down. The characters were extremely believable, both in their thoughts, actions, and in their reactions to situations. I will not spoil the story line, but the ending was strong, yet a little predictable. This book was an excellent blend of bond trading (of which I know little) and computers (of which I know a bit more). It was also very thought provoking; just where will virtual reality take us? I shall certainly be reading other titles by this author. Go on read it, you will enjoy it.

When I first read Michael Ridpath's "Free to Trade", I was thoroughly enthralled by the use of bond trading as background for a suspense story line. There have been few truly integrated financial mystery novels. (A couple others are "The Takeover" and "Nest of Vipers.") Due to what I considered an exceptional first novel, I was slightly disappointed by "Trading Reality." Ridpath's latest novel is more cyber-techno than financial; too bad when you consider Ridpath's background in the financial markets. Although he starts the novel in a bond trading room in London, it quickly moves into different territory, that of computer generated virtual reality. That said, this is a pretty good novel, with a fairly intricate and convoluted plot, including a few red herrings, a couple of nasty characters, and a predictable, yet satisfying, ending. I would have preferred if the protagonist developed a more creative financial bailout. Even so, the ending was reminiscent of the classical English sleuth gathering all of the principal characters into one room, making them squirm, and finally announcing the murderer. Frankly, this would probably make a great movie script. It could easily be placed in the USA. Throughout the book, I found myself substituting American locations (Wall Street for London; the coast of Maine for Scotland; Harvard for Oxford), and it still played well. How about it Hollywood!

This is definitely for someone who knows graph theory very well
and wants to learn the powerful tool of "probabilistic method".

As far as I know, this is the second book on the probabilistic method (the first one is by Alon and Spencer). It starts with some simple basic notions and gradually takes you to the heart of some deep (and complicated) results in graph theory. Although the technique can be used in different areas of combinatorics and theoretical computer science, almost all examples and problems in the book are related to graph theory (and specially graph coloring). One of the good points about this book is that they usually provide good intuitions for the proofs before going into their details.

If you consider yourself a combinatorist or a theoretical computer scientist and you don't know much about this tool this
book is a good source.

I read this book but it had a lot of un- information. I got more out of the movie. It does give a little info but not enought.

I really enjoyed reading this book it was very interesting and thought that the authors did an amazing job interviewing the key people. It did get a little slow at times but it was just because of all the details. It did have a little too much detail as to what was done to the children and the effects that occurred but it helps us understand and realize what the parents and medical staff had to see these helpless children go through. I do recommend this book to all who like to read true crime. Enjoy! :o)

I have to quibble with the previous reviewer. The book -- the result of years of research and absolutely factual (as it says in the Preface) -- was the BASIS for the well-received although fictionalized TV-Movie-of-the-Week. The book is, also, not your average True-Crime; this one is, like Capote's classic IN COLD BLOOD, a NOVEL as well. You won't be disappointed. (A final note: Dan Reed was not a "contributor," he was the CO-author, and, at the time, married to Ms. Moore.)

For fans of Lou Reed only. For a real look at Lou get Growing Up in Public, his authorized autobiography. This book is just another stale rock review of who signed for how much with what record company.

In terms of having real digestable content instead of just throwing quotes around and passing for a "biography" I'd say this falls flat on it's face..but if you're looking for something that will help you gain a good visual idea of Lou Reed and his various forms then this is definitly great for that! Full of advertisements, old zine clippings and photos etc this is a great scrapbook for Lou Reed and Velvet Underground fans with a lot of rare pix and quotes I havent seen elsewhere...

Wrenn presents Reed in a very interesting way -- the text is interspersed by Reed's quotes and actual reproductions of articles from magazines like Creem, NME, Melody Maker, Disc, Rock News, Rock & Folk, Village Voice, Rolling Stone, NY Rocker and Q. The photographs provide fascinating insight into the chronological documentation of a man and his music: from a sweet little boy at Syracuse University in 1963 to world weary drug casualty in the 70s, to happily married, reformed survivor in the 90s. Interesting pictures include the cover of the original trashy exposé "The Velvet Underground" by Michael Leigh, the book from which the band took their name, posters and tickets of Warhol's multi-media Exploding Plastic Inevitable show, rare records and record covers and exotic underground comics featuring Reed and the band. There's also a poignant picture of Nico and one of Warhol taken just before his death in 1986. Wrenn uses Reed's own words to present a powerful self-critiqe of the artist in all his facets-- musician, writer, poet, performer. The result is a remarkable insight into a man who has pushed himself and his music to the edge but who has survived with his cutting edge sharper than ever. Like this Reed qote: "All I ever wanted to do was to make records that adults could listen to without wincing, rather than all that 'rock below the waist' stuff. There's pop music, then there's what I do. I consider myself a writer."

There is a germ of a good book in here. It needs to be whittled down by 50% and the characters need more personality. It has some excitement in the trading scenes, but you have to slog through worthless stuff to get to them. For example, we go through a long, dull chapter describing a visit to the narrator's mum, hear a description of his father, his father's death, etc. and it really is all for naught. I hope his other books are better. Maybe if he read some Hammet or Hemmingway he can pick up some pointers on how to make the prose more efficient.

Thrillers set in real worlds are often the best escapism, I find. But not this time. Why? Because Ridpath's leaden writing deprives his setting of any real blood or believability. The result is rather tedious, because you'll find it very hard to care what happens to any of the hollow characters involved. A very over-hyped thriller...

Ridpath did an excellent job of weaving information about financial markets and trading into a mystery that spans the globe from London to Phoenix. He did a great job of portraying the people caught up in the bond and borrowing industry, and the ethical dilemmas they face. I would heartedly recommend the book.

I would put the book on par with Dick Francis and Grisham.