I am personnally a decendant of Juan Nepomuceno and would appreciate thoughts about this book. send comments to SRC_ME @ Yahoo.com. i have just learned of this book and a few others listed on this site and plan to review them all. Check back for future reviews by myself.

This is a wonderful book. The pictures of the Nevada landscape, from a very talented photographer who sees light in a magical way, are exceptionally beautiful. Particularly touching are the photographs of the authors' family and other workers at their ranch; one could wish that more of these very personal shots had been included.

The text is a perfect match for the photographs, conveying the flavor of life on the ranch and the exceptionally close family ties that develop when three generations work together with a common purpose. The reader is left hoping that this very exceptional environment and life style can be maintained in the generations to come; however there is a poignant description of the forces working against this outcome.

This Nevada ranch is a unique spot: the book makes an excellent gift for anyone (particularly western fans) who may not have the opportunity to visit the area in person. Highly recommended.

For depth, visual grandeur and sheer beauty, you can't do much better than this book. With buildings ranging from the Nasrid palace to the Umayyad mosque at Cordoba the author reveals the history and aesthetic techniques used in Spanish and Portugese Oriental architecture. Anyone wanting a fuller appreciation or knowledge of this rich architectural legacy would do well to linger over this one. Chapters are arranged by historical period or movement (Christianity in the North...Confrontation and Reconquest...Revival and Transformation...etc). The photos deserve special mention. They were specially commissioned for this book and are so gorgeous that I have picked up the book again and again (even when I was too tired to read the text) just to enjoy looking at them. Truly stunning photography!

"This book has centered on the concept and process of discovering and maintaining fit-strategic fit between the organization and its environment and internal fit among strategy, structure, and management processes. Fit, we have argued, is not merely important; it is crucial. With fit comes fame, with misfit comes failure...We have shown that fit is a simple concept but not a simple process. To achieve strategic fit, organizations must create, understand, develop, and sustain a distinctive competence that adds high value to goods or services the market desires...The obvious lesson here is the same one we have been emphasizing throughout this book. In the competitive world of today and tomorrow, competencies must be investment-based. They must rest on the sustained investment of money and time, which build ever-increasing skills and know-how as well as the capability to use them to their fullest (pp. 186-199)."

In this context R. Miles and C. Snow :

* discuss concept of fit.

* describe the external fit between the firm and its environment, and the internal fit of organization structure, management systems, and managerial ideology to a chosen strategy.

* discuss the companies (such as Carnegie Steel, GM, Sears, Roebuck, HP, and TRW) that pioneered the major organizational forms that have appeared over the past hundred years or so.

* discuss today's successful companies (such as GE, Wal-Mart, and Rubbermaid).

* discuss organizational failure and its major causes, identifying two generic types of failure.

* introduce and explore in detail the network organization and its three main variations : the stable, dynamic, and internal network as the 21st century's organization model.

* discuss mechanisms by which required fit is achieved at all three levels of the network form : across the entire network organization, among network firms in activated organizations, and within each of the specific network firms (such as Nike, Dell, Novell, and ABB).

* identify the forces pushing managers toward a new philosophy of management (human investment model).

* discuss companies that are struggling to redesign themselves-cutting costs, downsizing, bringing in new management teams, and so on.

* describe how total redesign may grow more costly in today's fast-paced world.

* illustrate that fit is no longer an idealistic "ought" but an economic "must"-not only within the firm but throughout the network form and the total global economy.

Detailed discussion of the concepts like technological change, cellular units, networks, network of alliances, interorganizational teamwork, spherical organization, shared knowledge see also William Halal's "The Infinite Resource (1998)", and "The New Management (1998)".

I highly recommend this "must" reading study.

If you enjoy armchair travel and more specifically armchair long distance walking, then this should be the book for you. If in addition, you enjoy laughing out loud or at least snorting appreciatively, then this is certainly the book for you.

Mark Wallington has a keen sense of the ridiculous and with his canine companion Boogie, sets out to tackle the South West Coast Path covering much of Devon and Cornwall in England. Their encounters and obstacles and joys are recorded with such humour that this book is diffcult to put down and in many ways reminds me of the writing of Bill Bryson.

Do they survive and make the end of the trail - well you'll just have to get hold of the book to find out!

Forty Miles from Poplar Bluff is a slice of life in southeast Missouri. The unvarnished grittiness of that life stood in stark contrast to the warmth and love that the characters displayed toward each other.
It is a reminder that we need to treat each other gently, for we are far more fragile than we tend to acknowledge. Despite the dark family secrets and betrayals, the reader is left with a story of love-across the generations and across racial boundaries.
I thought there was so much left unsaid. I wish it had been a longer novel. Maybe the author will publish a sequel.

My daugther used to find it hard to go back to math in the fall. She forgot many of the basics that she learned and so has a slow start that sets her back all year. We have been using this series of books as a warm-up for school for the last 3 years and find them to be perfect. They are the little practice that she needs to remember what she knew when she finished school in the spring.

My daughter read this book five times right after my wife and I bought it for her. She loves ghost stories and she loves horses, and this was a wonderful mix of both. What a find!

Coincidences? Sure, they happen.
Picture this. I planned a 2500 mile 4-day ride through sUtah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Needed something to read and Ron"s book had just shown up from the publisher, so I threw it in the saddlebag without even opening it.
I finally got to it while parked for the night in a dirty motel in a seedy town in southern Utah. Imagine my surprise when I saw Ron on the cover traveling the same sort of roads I had just been on.
After reading this book, my advice to you is buy it, read it and follow it. If you plan on covering a lot of superslab on your rides, you need this book.
My only complaint (small) is that Dan Kennedy at Whitehorse Press needs to use more color in these books. Some of the scenery in Ron's book deserves to be seen in glorious 4-color.

Detective Chief Inspector Charlie Woodend is booted out of Scotland Yard and sent to the 'provinces' where he is immediately assigned the case of a murdered policeman. Determined not to give the outsider with the reputation for being difficult any advantages, Woodend's new boss saddles him with a female Detective Sergeant determined to interpret anything he says as a sexual advance, and a staff of detectives willing to subvert the hunt for justice in order to protect the reputation of the fallen cop.

Woodend, along with Blonde bombshell Detective Sergeant Monika Paniatowski, descend into the English tourist destination of Blackpool with its barkers, tame girlie shows, lame comic routines, and close-knit carney community and find themselves cut off from effective work. If Woodend doesn't find a way to overcome Paniatowski's predjudices against all superiors, and to get effective work from the resentful local detectives, he'll fail.

Author Sally Spencer does a powerful job describing 1960s England, from its smokers, its transition from the war years and the coal/textiles-based industrial economy to a modern service economy, and the provincialism that remained in the north of England. At the same time, she has created two fully dimensioned characters in Paniatowski and Woodend. It's a joy to watch them step through initial distrust to achieve something akin to a partnership.

I could have done with a few fewer descriptions of Woodend's cigarette of choice (Capstan Full Strength), and found the first chapter a little distracting but once I got into this story, I couldn't put it down.

Highly Recommended