Dr Hugh Curtin is probably the most prepared head and neck radiologist of the world.

I will be assisting Dr. Curtin and of course find the cases comprehensive, from the archives of the Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary. The pathology spectrum is exhaustive.

*However, it seems that other reviews on this page are likely a practical joke, by mental infants.

YEEEHAW, that was great, gosh golly what work on the editing, by Hugh Curtin, I was amazed at the super job he did

I just finished reading this book cover to cover and feel very confident about moving on to the next stage of my CCNA preparation, practice tests and simulation! I've been using the CCExam software from CCStudy.com as well as a few other practice tests and am amazed how easy a lot of the questions were after reading this book. Just an indication of how comprehensive this book is.

More important, in my opinion, is the book's "readability"! I'm sure there are numerous books that cover the exact same information as this book yet might not be written in a manner that is clear and simple to understand, especially for Cisco newbies like myself. This book is just a lot of fun to read.

Finally, I really enjoyed the "real world" tone of this title. It isn't written for someone who's bound for the testing center, but rather for someone who needs to apply the knowledge at work in the field. I'm certain that I'll constantly be using this book as a reference even after passing the exam. Very cool.

All in all, I'd like to recommend ICND to the Cisco neophyte who's looking for that great "First Book" to start off his or her Cisco library. I'm really glad I got this book and I'm sure you will be too.

Good luck on your CCNA!

I read ICND by Cisco Press before. I found this book used on Amazon and bought it just because it was cheap. Now I can not put it down. This book is far better than Cisco Press' ICND. It has about 100 more pages than Cisco's. To me it is worth every minute spent to read this book.
I passed CCNA in December. So, I don't have the exam pressure. I am reading this just for fun and enjoying it.
I strongly recommend it over Cisco's ICND if you intent to take CCNA test.

I pass ccna2.0 with 935/1000 today. All I have is this book and Boson exams. I've read my friend's Todd Lammle book. I think this book is much better than Todd's. Todd's is written for passing the exam. For the ICND book, you actally learn the CCNA stuff in depth. I strongely recommend this book for everyone who want to pass the CCNA2.0 with FULLY understanding.

Comments on Profit Beyond Measure by Tom Johnson:

Tom Johnson's overview of business thinking is astoundingly clear, the beginning of the revolution that Dr. W. Edwards Deming demanded for so many years.

The Toyota story is told beautifully in chapter 3; now I begin to understand what happens in that Kentucky facility.

Chapter 4 is the weakness of the book; there is no there there. The Scania "secret" is not in the same universe as that at Toyota. What more evidence do we need than the sale of the company?

Chapter 5 is fascinating. Tom Johnson the heretic! A modern day Martin Luther! No one on Wall Street will want to know about orderline analysis. However, if those using it prosper...

The stock market vanish? That is precisely what will happen if Tom Johnson's thinking catches on. And that can't happen too soon. It may already be too late to preserve our culture as we know it. But then, it may be time.

Most in business will not want to hear the last two chapters. But no one wants to hear that they have cancer either, right? This patient (the world economy) has cancer, and no one knows if survival is possible.

I can't wait for the next iteration of this "stuff." The books that Johnson (and a few others, like Dr. Ed Baker) are going to write could make all the difference in our future. Dr. Norman Borlaug and his cohorts are trying to feed the world in spite of potentially deadly water shortages; Johnson and a few like-minded intellectuals are trying to feed the world correct thinking in spite of potentially deadly shortsightedness.

Since the day Amazon delivered my copy of Johnson and Broms' Profit Beyond Measure,I have taken delight with every page. This book is a wonderfully brilliant, masterful book that may be the serious business book of this decade in the way Senge's Fifth Discipline was for the 1990's. Insightful writers such as Margeret Wheatley and Danah Zohar have artfully open our eyes to the potential of viewing organizations as naturally evolving living systems. Notwithstanding their powerful insights, the actual application of these ideas left a lot to the imagination as to how they would actually be applied. Johnson and Broms, however, provide the substance and put the meat on the bones of the many complexity and chaos theory books available today. Johnson and Broms tell us with precision and in entaintaining detail the stories of Toyota and Scania Truck and how, respectively, they have gone forty and sixty-sixty years without losing money---how, they manage by means, as part of living systems, not trying to orchestrate management by the results (a notion of believing that you can fix future events to happen within a management plan) as America's Big 3 auto companies have over the past century. Johnson and Broms take us inside of the Toyota and Scania plants and board rooms, helping us see how they produce only according to actual orders, how they design and set up assembly and modulated processes to avoid waste (not eliminate it, avoid it in the first place!), how they treat their employees, how they see customers and market and more. Drawing from the principles articulated by Gregory Bateson, Johnson and Bohms help us see the unique milieu and overriding philosophy and work culture that is reflective of an open, living system, that relies on "balanced, cyclical patterns of continuous flow of the work for every person in the organization." Before reading this book, I only had a vague notions of how chaos, complexity, and new science theories applied to the emerging organizations of today. As a result of reading this book, however, I believe I now can grasp what it means, in real and substantive terms, for an organization to exist, evolve, and succeed as part of living system. This is a book for the new century. Every business can learn from this book and those that don' will perish while Toyota, Scania, and others of this fabric will thrive in our increasingly complex and interdependent world. I recommend this book to any one interested in business theory, organizational development, or building a better organization. Tom Coens

For manufacturers the 20th century was the story of Ford and Toyota. The story of the transition from mass production to lean production has been told many times, but often focusing on the techniques, not the strategy. Professor Johnson has developed a profound insight into the strategy behind Toyota's approach, framed as management by means, rather than management by results.

This is the most important insight into the Toyota Production System which has come my way in the last ten years. Johnson demonstrates why the Toyota Management by Means approach gives superior long term value to customers, shareholders and employees.

Profit without Measure is essential reading for any manufacturer building a strategy for World Class Manufacturing.

From the beginning of the 20th century Jung championed a secular psychology that also viewed the human as essentially sacred and irreducible and by so doing set himself apart from and against the strictly positivistic science that the western world espoused at and since that time. Jung's ideas, far from succumbing to collective bias and oblivion, have disseminated themselves substantively throughout the entire world for the last 100 years in the form of the many psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, and professional and lay groups who presently identify themselves with Jung's ideas. Kirsch's book is a history of exactly how and through whom that dissemination has occurred and in whom and in what organizations it resides. Although Kirsch says his is a social and political history and not an intellectual one, that is not entirely correct, for, as he tracks people over time and about the world, he differentiates what aspect of Jung's spirit each tends most to embody (and defend): the philosophical, the clinical, the religious, the archetypal, the developmental. And in this weaving arise the confrontations, conflicts, and confluences that finally shape the ongoing state and living drama of Jungian psychology. No one other than Kirsch could have written this book. His life, like none other, has been part and parcel of the events and people he describes (see the Preface). Far from having become a passive cipher in the play, he has had a hand in its evolution and yet, in his story, he steps outside of the fray to portray its horizons. For a professional within the field itself, like myself, this gives rise to a dual gift: first, an invaluable aid in locating oneself and one's own ideas within the collective of the movement, and second, the spurring of intimations of what lies beyond the knowns of the present Jungian world. Concerning the book itself, Kirsch is a master of the matter of fact. In sweeping but trenchantly accurate statements (the accuracy is the gift) he avers simply what is and what isn't. In a brief paragraph he explains how the introduction of Jung's continental philosophying into England has given rise to a British traditionally empiricist reaction (and then spells out that reaction in the splits and vicissitudes of the English groups). In addressing Jung's monumentally injudicious gaffes of the mid 1930s, he says, "As we analysts know, timing is critical in analysis, and the same holds true for politics" His summing ups share the same precise and parsimonious qualities: "In my experience, almost all Jungians, in addition to amplifying and interpreting dreams, recognize the primarily symbolic nature of the unconscious, the importance of working with the transference/countertransference relationship, and the necessity for maintaining strict professional boundaries." In the reading, lesser known gems fall from the pages from time to time. I did not know that Jung had met Lacan. Kirsch says where and how. Nor did I know that he had spoken in England before 1925 (he gave a seminar in Cornwall in 1923; I do not think it is published as yet). The chapter on Germany alone is worth the price of the book. Kirsch has ferreted out and redacted material in strict temporal sequence that is more complete than any I have read before. This involves the history of Jungian psychology in Germany but, more importantly in my opinion, Jung's relationship to the Nazis. Kirsch is more even-handed and straightforward in his accounts than in any other I have read, including his father's extensive statements on the same subject. And Kirsch (the son) arrives at what feels to be extremely fair judgments, plainly delivered and patently devoid of polemical covering up. A second chapter of particular worth is the last one, "Observations and Conclusions." Again, it is the precision and the matter of factness that make it valuable for seeing in one place and through plain language the present edges of things Jungian. In the foreword, historian Peter Homans says that Kirsch is "generous" in this history. In my opinion, it is true beyond a doubt. Generous in its plethora of material, its reader-friendly expression, and in its sharing of personal information. In its historical place, its importance for the Jungian world resembles in kind the book Bollingen by William McGuire in which he, like Kirsch, fleshes out an intellectual movement related to the Jungian world in the specific details of the persons and places and modus operandi served by the foundation set up (now defunct) by Mary Mellon. Both books make people whose names and writings are synonymous with Jungiana come to full sentient life. Besides Kirsch and McGuire, we have only histories of Jung and his ideas. I highly recommend Kirsch's book as a very interesting read, a source of new information, and a singular documentation of Jungian ideas and their embodiment in the world. For the lay person, even one not familiar with the Jungian world, the book is a history of how a little known psychology - one that is unique and friendlier than probably any other to the spiritual - becomes a part of the culture of nations and the world.

The Jungians sets out to describe the social and political history of the Jungian communities throughout the world and accomplishes its aims admirably. It will be the gold standard for historical inquiry into the Jungian movement for decades to come with an informative discussion of the development of every institute and of the contributions of each significant figure in nalytic psychology.

This is a must for every psychiatrist and psychologist who is interested in the history of psychiatry and psychology, and for every layman who is interested in these fields.

The recipes in this cookbook helped me to make the lifesyle change that I was ready for. The recipes are quick and easy. I love the vegatable chowder. I lost more than 30 lbs. Whats more, this in not fad dieting, this is a new way to eat -- for good.

An amazing book, especially for beginning vegan cooks. Cheryl even includes lists of what is in her own pantry! Very informative and the pictures make your mouth water!

I have three of Cheryl's cookbooks, but this one gets the most use. Cheryl includes all the information needed to complete her recipies, she also includes variations which are really helpful. I would also highly reccomend her most recent book "More Choices for a Healthy Low-fat You." If you're looking it up by author, keep in mind her last name is now Peters. Great book, a must for all Vegetarians

I was told on Friday that on Monday I would be a district manager. Wow, what a shocker, and no corporate training program available for at least three months down the road. This book gave me all the in's and out's that I eventually learned as I grew into the job. A terrific book for newly promoted district managers.

A great book for new district managers, provides all of the skills that they require to get up to speed and running. Provides everything they need to know to make the transition from sales rep to district manager, during that tough first year.

This is the only pharmaceutical district management book in the United States. The book is designed for all district managers with two or less years of experience, however it provides excellent information for even the most seasoned district managers. The transition from representative to manager and the definition of management are completely covered. The managemet skills of planning, organizing, leading and contolling, are civered in depth. Managers are walked through all skill areas required to be successful in pharmaceutical sales management. Each of the eleven chapters has its own set of learning objectives, review questions and answers. Checklists, forms and numerous exercises are included in the eleven chapter text. This book is an economical and effective way to support existing district manager training programs, and it is precisely for this reason that many pharmaceutical companies have purchased it for all of their district managers.

David Baum's work on change management, while not as scholarly or detailed as John Kotter's widely-read "Leading Change," is well-written and accessible to a variety of audiences. He arranges his subject matter so that you can open to any page, begin reading there and glean some useful, practical advice on the process of change management. He writes in a very easy and informal style, which makes the book fun to read. As is the case with many of these "management" books, Baum leans a little heavily on anecdotes and witty stories to illustrate his points, but nevertheless manages to keep them concise and relevant. If your company, organization or group is going through a reorganization or a change management process, I would definitely recommend reading this book as a group both before and during the process. I think it will be very helpful, thought-provoking and well worth your time.

I LOVED this book. Practical, useful, funny, refreshing. I was delighted with the specific suggestions and useful information provided. I could pick it up anywhere, read from anywhere. It's a delight to have a leadership book so accessible.

In particular, the chapters on the change cycle and the benefits we get in NOT changing were especially useful and thought-provoking.

My only problem was everyone who picked up my copy wanted to take it with them.

...A practical reflection of David's travels through corporations... and life. Lots of very useful and inspiring ideas of what to do and what NOT to do to solve problems in organizations. The book is organized into short, easy to read chapters, each making a key point.

NOT the usual business rhetoric; instead it's based on actual experiences, so it's both funny and packed with learning. Highly recommended!

I just used to be so into all of the awards shows, but especially the Grammys. This year, however, I just found myself hugely let down performance wise, not to mention the way that the awards were handed out. Feel that it is injustice? Then check out this book! The book was brought to us by "Variety", a magazine that makes even those normal people interested in Hollywood cringe, although a few of the statements made by the writers make sense. Just check out the stats! It gives all the nominees and winners of these "prestigious" music awards from 1958 to 1998. Its insane to read the list of people that had not won Grammys (the amazing Neil Young) yet some of those legends have only recently (Cher for the dancey "Believe" and Elvis Costello for his lighter sounding work with Burt Baccarach) are of course not listed in this 1998 book. The stats are flawless. Lets say you have a craving to know who won the best male rock vocal performance for 1985, just take a look and you found it (Don Henley for his hit rock ballad "Boys of Summer").

It's is nonsense, but its just fun stuff to know. Even the years by year accounts of what happened at every show are fun. If you are a pop culture pariah like I am, this book. I also want to urge that this book is not only for fans of the awards. Just reading this book might make your blood boil of your favorites loosing out to unwarranted winners. For example, when Milli Vanilli won there fraud of an award, they won over inspiring hip hop acts like Neneh Cherry (the funky "Buffalo Stance" songstress) and Soul II Soul (the groundbreaking UK dance blues group of "Back To Life" fame)! And Pia Zodra (best known to many for her hilarious cameos in "Naked Gun 33 and1/3" and "Hairspray") was actually nominated for a rock performance Grammy for a song called "Rock It Out" (I downloaded it in. Perhaps her husband was behind that as well? Again, it useless information, but pleasant nonetheless.

I really enjoy Tom O'Neil's other two books, too -- "Movie Awards" and "The Emmys." I cannot recommend these books stronger to you guys. I'm addicted to them. Get all three -- you'll thank me. (...)

The author doesn't varnish Grammy's scandalous past! He tells it like it is in a sassy, fun writing style -- year by year. All of the nominees and winners are listed, plus there are lots of photos, old pages from the tradepaper Variety -- and FASCINATING trivia in the back of the book. (Elvis never won Record or Album of the Year, but the Fifth Dimension won best record TWICE! WOW!). Highly recommended.

Giovanni Boccaccio THE DECAMERON. Second Edition. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by G. H. McWilliam. cli + 909 pages. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin Books, 1995. ISBN 0-14-044629-X (Pbk).

Second-hand opinions can do a lot of harm. Most of us have been given the impression that The Decameron is a lightweight collection of bawdy tales which, though it may appeal to the salacious, sober readers would do well to avoid. The more literate will probably be aware that the book is made up of one hundred stories told on ten consecutive days in 1348 by ten charming young Florentines who have fled to an amply stocked country villa to take refuge from the plague which is ravaging Florence.

Idle tales of love and adventure, then, told merely to pass the time by a group of pampered aristocrats, and written by an author who was quite without the technical equipment of a modern story-teller such as Flannery O'Connor. But how, one wonders, could it have survived for over six hundred years if that's all there were to it? And why has it so often been censored? Why have there always been those who don't want us to read it?

A puritan has been described as someone who has an awful feeling that somebody somewhere may be enjoying themselves, and since The Decameron offers the reader many pleasures it becomes automatically suspect to such minds. In the first place it is a comic masterpiece, a collection of entertaining tales many of which are as genuinely funny as Chaucer's, and it offers us the pleasure of savoring the witty, ironic, and highly refined sensibility of a writer who was also a bit of a rogue. It also provides us with an engaging portrait of the Middle Ages, and one in which we are pleasantly surprised to find that the people of those days were every bit as human as we are, and in some ways considerably more delicate.

We are also given an ongoing hilarious and devastating portrayal of the corruption and hypocrisy of the medieval Church. Another target of Boccaccio's satire is human gullibility in matters religious, since, then as now, most folks could be trusted to believe whatever they were told by authority figures. And for those who have always found Dante to be a crushing bore, the sheer good fun of The Decameron, as Human Comedy, becomes, by implication (since Boccaccio was a personal friend of Dante), a powerful and compassionate counterblast to the solemn and cruel anti-life nonsense of The Divine Comedy.

There is a pagan exuberance to Boccaccio, a frank and wholesome celebration of the flesh; in contrast to medieval Christianity's loathing of woman we find in him what David Denby beautifully describes as "a tribute to the deep-down lovableness of women" (Denby, p.249). And today, when so many women are being taught by anti-sex radical feminists to deny their own bodies and feelings, Boccaccio's celebration of the sexual avidity of the natural woman should come as a very welcome antidote. For Denby, who has written a superb essay on The Decameron that can be strongly recommended, Boccaccio's is a scandalous book, a book that liberates, a book that returns us to "the paradise from which, long ago, we had been expelled" (Denby, p.248).

The present Penguin Classics edition, besides containing Boccaccio's complete text, also includes a 122-page Introduction, a Select Bibliography, 67 pages of Notes, four excellent Maps and two Indexes. McWilliam, who is a Boccaccio scholar, writes in a supple, refined, elegant and truly impressive English which successfully captures the highly sophisticated sensibility of Boccaccio himself. His translation reads not so much as a translation as an original work, though his Introduction (which seems to cover everything except what is most important) should definitely be supplemented by Denby's wonderfully insightful and stimulating essay, details of which follow:

Chapter 17 - 'Boccaccio,' in 'GREAT BOOKS - My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World'
by David Denby. pp.241-249. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0-684-83533-9 (Pbk).

Ten young Florentine noblemen and women escaping the Black Death in Florence in 1348 entertain themselves by each relating a story per day for ten days - 100 entertaining stories in all, mostly set in and around medieval Florence. Although famously naughty, none of these stories strikes a modern reader as more than mildly erotic. Rather, they consistently astonish by their thoroughly modern message that women are as good as men, nobility doesn't come from birth, sanctity doesn't come from the church, and - above all - true love must never be denied. Amazingly, Boccaccio often delivers this message while pretending to say the exact opposite; sometimes he presents very sympathetic characters who get away with things thought scandalous in his time, offering a mere token condemnation at the end, while other times he depicts someone actually following the accepted code and committing some horrible act of cruelty in the process. Either way - and despite his claims to be upholding convention - we always know what he really means, and apparently he didn't fool too many people in his own day either.

But one doesn't need to focus on the revolutionary aspects of the Decameron to enjoy the book; each of the stories delights the reader with a different tasty morsel, and, you can read as much or as little at a time as you please. Once you get past the introduction, (and that's probably the most serious part of the book, so be sure not to give up before you get to the first story) the stories will make you laugh, make you cringe, and make you sit on the edge of your seat. Inspiring authors from Chaucer to Shakespeare and entertaining audiences for over 700 years, the Decameron continues to delight.

For a book to be even considered to a classic; then it, i.e., the book has to stand the test of time (and by so been read, pondered on and enjoy by several generations). The Decameron (Oxford World's Classics) by Giovanni Boccaccio, et al is one of these few books, e.g., The Odyssey, Thus Spoke Zarathustra et al. The story follows a plethora of storytellers whom all have gone to the countryside to escape the plague. The stories are filled with bravura, vigor, fortitude, a bit of sex and many other subjects (that are all written with an uncanny ability). If one considered oneself to be a scholar or a learned man then this book, i.e., The Decameron (Oxford World's Classics) by Giovanni Boccaccio, et al, is a must have; since not owning or having read it, then one as a person/scholar/learnedman must be considered less then civilized.

Peter Kreeft of Boston College has performed a work of mercy for those of us who were cheated in college by being kept in blithe ignorance of the greatest Christian philosopher. Ironically, I was cheated at a Catholic university of exposure to Aquinas! But Peter Kreeft has provided selections of Aquinas with generous footnotes explaining and enlightening various passages and even including diagrams for those of us trying to catch up. I can comfort myself with the thought that a well annotated book by Kreeft, who is also a skilled Catholic apologist, is assuredly better than what I probably would have received anyway as an undergraduate in a decidedly confused Catholic university.

One need not be a Christian, nor even a Roman Catholic, to know of the centrality of Saint Thomas Aquinas to medeival philosophy. In his monumental work, the "Summa Theologia" (and, to a lesser extent, the supplementary tract "Summa Contra Gentiles"), Aquinas kept Aristotelian 'pagan' philosophy alive by applying its principles to the Church. Unfortunately, readers today (save for the most devout, I suppose) hardly have the time to read the whole thing. This is where Boston College's Peter Kreeft helps out. Further concentrating his previous Aquinian abridgment, the "Summa of the Summa," Professor Kreeft gives us the most accessible reduction of Aquinas's philosophy with "A Shorter Summa." Well-edited, well-translated, and well-organized, this small book is a fantastic summary of the monumental philosophy written centuries ago by the official Doctor of the Church.

I had the pleasure of taking a class in Medieval Philosophy with Peter Kreeft. We used this text in our survey of St. Thomas Aquinas alongside G.K. Chesterton's "Dumb Ox"--which I also recommend as a secondary source. This is a wonderful introduction into the thought of one of the most brilliant minds in the history of the world. Aquinas's "Summa Theologica" is an overview of Christian philosophy and theology, according to Aquinas. It is, however, over 5,000 pages long--a bit much for the common reader. In "A Shorter Summa" Kreeft has selected and annotated the most vital sections of the Summa, making Thomas's philosophy both accurate and accessible. If you are looking for a little more to chew on, I'd advise Kreeft's other abridgment entitled "Summa of the Summa"--hence, my title. "A Shorter Summa" is a gem, packed with more knowledge than most books five times its size. I not only recommend it; I plead that you give it a whirl.