This book is best for those who have already read a couple of books on leadership, particularly those by Warren Bennis and James MacGregor Burns since these two figure's ideas are present in many of this book's pages. That is not to say there are no new paths taken. Sashkin and Rosenbach's "A New Vision of Leadership" is eye-opening in its redefinition of transformational leadership. This essay also does well in illustrating the differences between leadership and management, a division I was not sure existed until I picked up this book. Payne, Fuqua, and Canegami's "Women as Leaders" was equally fresh and eye-opening. This is a good book to read to start developing more complex ways of looking at leadership.

The book was very informative, precise and easy to follow and understand. It gives you a very clear understanding of what's available to you and what resources to check. It has helped me after one whole year of trying to figure out how to start my business, do just that. Everyone should read this, even if you already have a business of you own, it can help in many ways - Who doesn't need money and advice?

This text provides valuble information pertaining to half-lives in different media such as soil, air, and groundwater, aqueous biodegradation, photolysis, photooxidation, reduction and hydrolysis. I have used this information in the past on many occasions when discussing degradation of contaminants. I've foudn this to be a very useful book and am aware of numerous other consultant who have utilized this material.

Unlike many books of this genre, Managing Windows NT server 4.0 is a well thought out analysis of each component of Windows NT server and how they interrelate. Rather than skim the surface, this book plunges head-first into the depths of the operating system to increase the reader's understanding of Microsoft's flagship product.

Examples of this include the chapter on Disk Administrator, which stands out as a sterling example of technical reference. Clear, concise and revealing, it is a pleasure to read.

The command-line technical reference is also stunning in its depth, and often reveals more items than digging through the manuals.

In all, an excellent volume.

The 1999 edition that I read is a collection of 34 Harvard Business Review articles, class discussion papers and case studies written by the four authors (all business school professors) and a few others over the 1980s and 90s.

The chapters written by the four professors have a strong academic/pedagogic orientation. Dealing with basic issues in extreme analytic detail, they frequently belabor the obvious and often come across as though they have all the answers (chapters written by Sahlman were especially bad for this). The book does, however, provide some thought-provoking discussion and a reasonable introduction to the issues of assessing viability, planning and managing a new business, and of attracting resources. Some of the chapters not written by the professors provide a good "textbook" reference for subjects such as patent law, raising venture capital, and management technique in checklist style.

I give the book three stars for its rigorous analysis but not five because of its presumptuous tone and the fact that too many of the chapters lean toward the hypothetical. It lacks the genuine, practitioner-based input this subject deserves.

Sahlman provides a very comprehensive volume on the current stage of knowledge of entrepreneurship as a field. In the articles, which are mainly written by a limited number of professors, all important topics related to entrepreneurship are addressed, such as finance, personality, marketing, strategy, culture, and many more. From an academic perspective, it is a 10.

However, I often felt that it was missing more on the practical side. For example, there are a few case studies, but only on certain topics. It was missing more of the "been there, done that" perspective. Definitely there were stories, but in those there was more of a strategic analysis rather than visionary or inspirational.

Overall, this is a very good book to use as reference to certain topics, especially in an academic environment.

As an MBA student at Harvard six years ago, I had the opportunity to learn under Professor Sahlman. His class and his books are worth their weight in gold if you intend to either start companies or invest in them. This book brings together some of the best ideas from his colleagues.

After reading "Devil Take the Hindmost," which deals very intelligently and thoroughly with investment bubbles of all kinds going back to the South Sea Bubble, I was very much looking forward to reading this book, particularly as it has been written by a very successful stock market investor. I was, however, sadly disappointed.

The author expends virtually all of his efforts discussing mob behavior, but rarely in the context of investments and market madness, i.e., most of the examples he uses relate to Ku Klux Klan activities, the French citizens' attack on the Bastille, the Watts riots and other such emotional mob activities. While these are often interesting and sometimes horrifying, they have only tangential bearing on market manias and investment fads. Furthermore, most of the text has been copied and pasted from reports on these activities that were written by others.

As an investment professional (and having invested in the market myself for over 35 years), I have long believed that, at least in the short term, market prices are dictated as much by psychology as by fundamentals such as profit growth, investment return expectations, balance sheets, business strategies, profit margins, competiting products and services, interest rates and such. And I thought the book would provide at least a few insights into investor psychology and how it moves markets; certainly a thorough discussion of the Dotcom and tech manias of recent years would have been a very apt topic for discussion.

Alas! There was no discussion at all about these issues of investment psychology; rather, the author was content to provide example after example of how, many times in the past, mobs are capable of taking on a life of their own and engaging in group-think, abandoning analysis and rational decision-making. Well, I guess we already know that. We are left on our own to try to figure out how "collective mob behavior" infects investors' psyches and affects the movement of stock prices.

Readers who would like a lot more insight into that process should buy "Devil Take the Hindmost," and not waste their time or money on this book.

Ralph

This is compilation of stories about crowd behavior, amusing at times, but with little or no insight, except that you should not panic. Everybody already knows that and besides it is not always true. In a stock market crash it is better to panic sooner rather than later. Also, I recall that a number of people in the WTC horror died because they decided to stay put in their offices rather than to rush down. But what I really don't like at all about this book is that it is marketed as a book for investors. This is nonsense. It is a book of stories about crowd behavior with no analysis except, as noted, the completely one-sided recommendation that you should not go along with the crowd.

Amazon offered Menschel's book at a combination price with Taleb's Fooled by Randomness. Mistakenly, I expected both to provide stock market guidance. Taleb's book had little and Menschel's has less.

The study guide and lab manual is not written on a level suitable for most college electrical engineering courses, I believe, since it is rather mechanical in its procedures, which are of the form "do this, measure that" but do not require much understanding of the underlying theory. Although there are a few questions accompanying the "procedures" these do not probe deeply enough, in my opinion, and it would be quite possible for a student to perform the experiment and fill in all the blanks without understanding much of what s/he did. There are "review" sheets preceeding each experiment which touch on the theory, but again in a mechanical way. It does not seem to me that the experiments would provide any opportunity for creativity or real *experimentation* for students, and therefore the authors' goal of "stimulating your interest in elecricity and electronics" is unlikely to be met.