I wasn't sure what to expect with this anthology, but I found myself enthralled from beginning to end. Nnedi Okorafor's "Crossroads", Seth Lindberg's "Atropos", and James Dorr's "Madness" were special delights.

A great mix of chilling, horrifying, and otherwise entertaining stories.

This is a great compilation of magic, madness, culture and creativity. All of the stories were pretty satisfying, some of them terrifying! There are some writers here that are going to go places. Watch for the authors of the two longest pieces, Nnedi Okorafor (her story is called Crossroads) and James S. Dorr (he wrote a story called Madness).

Used successfully to re-work many of the operations of a small company.

AAA provides not only an analytical framework for organisational change, but - more importantly - an extensive and concrete manual for implementation.

When you've done enough reading on the subject and have to actually DO something, get this book.

This book's theme is developing a workforce that is aligned to overall organizational mission and goals, is accountable for performing to established metrics and focused on meeting customer expectations. The workforce is broken into "natural work teams" are service-oriented as opposed to function- or task-oriented. Without a methodical approach, such as the one set forth in this book, developing such a workforce is a near-impossible task. However, the authors lay out a clear path to achieving just such a workforce.

The expected outcome of area activity analysis is cultural change (starting with renaming teams to reflect their real roles as service providers), focusing the mission on service, defining clear activity descriptions for which the teams are responsible, determining how to measure team effectiveness, establishing service-related performance standards and restructuring reward systems.

Using a seven phase approach, the book leads you through the entire process of transforming to "natural work teams". The first three phases are foundational, and consist of (I) preparations for the activity analysis, (II) developing service-oriented mission statements for the functional areas (not easily done), (III) defining the activities for each area.

Phase IV is the pivot point during which you develop customer relationships. Customers can be internal customers of the activity or external customers. In this respect there is a set of classifications that need to be performed for the activities themselves, which are: Real-Value-Added (RVA), which provide value as seen through the eyes of the activity's customer; Business-Value-Added (BVA), which may be necessary to support internal business functions, but provide no direct benefit to the activity's customer, and No-Value-Added (NVA), which are not essential to business functions, nor do they add any perceivable value to customers. This information is used in Phase V to determine the efficiency of the activity. It is also worth noting at this point that the what authors call "activities" are processes and process chains, so you may have to either adopt his vocabulary or mentally translate as you read. This is not a criticism of the book, however, because the approach is valuable and will enable you to classify activities in accordance with their value characteristics and determine if they are optimum for their intended use. Phase VI entails developing supplier partnerships. This is applicable to both external supply chain partners as well as internal activities. An example of an internal supplier partnership, taken from my profession, is services provided by IT to end users (usually codified in service level agreements and comprised of service level objectives). The final phase, VII, addresses continuous improvement. An added bonus is the CD ROM that comes with the book contains an application called WorkDraw, which is a process modeling tool with many of the same features as Micrografx iGrafx Process.

As an IT professional who works extensively on projects for service level management and IT-Business alignment I found this book to be a gem. In fact, the service-orientation of the "natural work teams" has changed my thinking about how to structure an ideal IT organization, and has also greatly influenced my thinking about how to manage service delivery. The book earns 5 solid stars and my highest recommendation.

I read this book as a child and re-read it everytime I visited my grandmother's farm. It never fails to delight people of all ages in communicating the Christian based parables within it.
I was sorry to see that it is no longer in print. It is timeless.

Hooray! I read this book almost 40 years ago and I am so happy to see it again. It contains great parables that kids of all ages will be able to relate to and remember. The issues are timeless and parents would be well advised to read it to and with their children.

I wish it were still in print. This is a book that helps one slow down, panic less and celebrate more!!

This book should be mandatory reading. If everybody achieved the balance this book offers, there would be no horrors.

Poison Ivy Murders proves that William H. Reid has mastered the tools of a good writer. His total concept of writing is second to none.

A gruesome campus murder opens a keg of worms in this small New Hampshire town. Reid's book moves fast as Mike Thatcher goes about in his quest to bring the murderer to justice. His investigation instills fear into the entire University faculty, staff, professors, and several Petersborough citizens. What are they hiding?

Two decades ago, Thatcher himself attended Fields University. His love life is on hold but his detective work has now turned up skeletons from his own past.

Mr. Reid's first hand knowledge of Universities gave him an edge on Poison Ivy Murders. This book is exciting, thrilling, and keeps the reader in suspense. It is well written by a master and suggested for adult reading.

Poison Ivy Murders proves that William H. Reid has mastered the tools of a good writer. His total concept of writing is second to none.

A gruesome campus murder opens a keg of worms in this small New Hampshire town. Reid's book moves fast as Mike Thatcher goes about in his quest to get the murderer brought to justice. His investigation instills fear into the entire University faculty, staff, professors, and several Petersborough citizens. Many have multiple sins to hide.

Two decades ago, Thatcher himself attended Fields University. His love life is on hold but his work has now turned up skeletons from his own past.

Mr. Reid's first hand knowledge of Universities gave him an edge on Poison Ivy Murders. This book is exciting, thrilling, and keeps the reader in suspense. It is well written by a master and suggested for adult reading.

To those of you who love to cook, this book is a must. One of the better cook books my wife has, and she has over one hundred cook books in her collection.

Matsumura has achieved a great success with this book. The first nine chapters contain all of the algebra used in Hartshorne's _Algebraic Geometry_, and a reader who masters all of that material will be well on the way to a solid understanding of algebraic geometry. At the same time, the writing is clear and concise, and the exercises (which the reader should of course do!) are enlightening. In this regard, one should compare Matsumura's book with Eisenbud's _Commutative Algebra with a View Toward Algebraic Geometry_, which has a similar scope but takes up 800 pages. Both books are beautifully written, but while Matsumura prefers a more subtle way of teaching the reader the tricks of the trade, Eisenbud makes explicit commentary on his methods and intuition. Another helpful comparison between the two is in their fundamental approach: Matsumura tends to use universal constructions which are not computationally effective, while Eisenbud seems to keep the computer in mind. Thus, whereas Eisenbud studies the module of differentials using generators and relations, Matsumura uses the universal properties of representable functors.

Unfortunately, this book is not sufficient for a first introduction to commutative algebra, as the pace can be brisk for a reader without the mathematical maturity to appreciate Matsumura's condensed style. (One could read this book after reading Atiyah and MacDonald's _Introduction to Commutative Algebra_.) Nevertheless, for a reader seeking a solid understanding of the commutative algebra necessary for (modern) algebraic geometry, there is no better reference than Matsumura's book.

A minor gripe: the formatting is visually slightly confusing -- the announcements of Theorems, Corollaries, Lemmas, Remarks, Proofs, etc. are all set in italic typeface, so there is not much to orient the eye on the page.

H. James Harrington, Glen D. Hoffherr and Robert P. Reid argue that creativity is not reserved for the few. Rather, it is a skill all humans can develop - if they are willing to step back from their day-to-day routines and focus on their inner lives. This book is a mind-altering system. It is packed with quotes, cartoons, graphs, and exercises to help individuals and organizations realize their creative potential. If the writing seems redundant at times, it is only because the authors want you to be able to open the book anywhere and learn something quickly - and you can. We [...] recommend this book and its CD-ROM package to high-level managers looking to shake things up in the office or in their personal lives. But lower-level employees who want to move up in the world will benefit from it as well.

A useful textbook for students, scientists and policy makers. The information is extensive and detailed in a logical fashion, taking the reader from the basics of biodiversity through to human influences, economic values and conservation.

This book is an outstanding and accurate treatise on hydrodynamic stability. I've never read any scientific article concerning hydro and fluid dynamic stability without a reference to this book. Thus let's deal with fluid dynamic stability with this precious and absolute masterpiece at hand!