"The Leadership Challenge Planner is a one-hop-at-a-time workbook for leaders. It's designed to help you reflect and act on your need (or organization's) for change...When we began our research, we decided to find out what practices characterize exemplary leaders: people who get extraordinary things done in organizations. Our research began with analyzing what behaviors people demonstrated when they were leading a project that they considered a 'personal best': one that set an individual standard of excellence for them. We collected thousands of stories of leaders performing at their peak, and we looked at what actions seemed to be consistent in all the stories. Several years-and several thousand quantitative and qualitative analyses-later, we found that five practices define exemplary leadership: 1.Challenging the process 2.Inspiring a shared vision 3.Enabling others to act 4.Modeling the way 5.Encouraging the heart...The purpose of this planner is to assist people, managers and nonmanagers alike, in furthering their ability to lead others and get extraordinary things done...We hope that his planner convinces you that leadership is everyone's business...By accepting the challenge to lead, you come to realize that the only limits are those you place on yourself" (from the Introduction).

In this context, throughout the five chapters (3 through 7), James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner list and explain guidelines for these five practices.

1. Guidelines for Challenging the Process- Try these strategies to change, grow, innovate, and improve: *treat every job as an adventure *send people shopping for ideas *put 'idea gathering' on your own agenda *go out and find something that needs fixing *take a class; learn a new skill *experiment, experiment, experiment *make it safe for others to experiment *work with ideas that may sound strange initially *debrief every failure as well as every success *model risk taking.

2. Guidelines for Inspiring a Shared Vision- Try hese strategies to envision an uplifting future and enlist others in the vision: *determine what you want *act on your intuition *test your assumptions *become a futurist *develop your interpersonal competence *breathe life into your vision *speak positively *speak from the heart *make the intangible tangible *listen, listen, listen.

3. Guidelines for Enabling Others to Act- Try these strategies to build trust and strengthen others: *always say we *increase interactions *focus on gains, not losses *from planning and problem-solving partnership *go first *enlarge people's sphere of influence *make sure delegated tasks are relevant *make connections *make heroes of other people *educate, educate, educate.

4. Guidelines for Modeling the Way- Try these strategies to set the example and achieve small wins: *open a dialoque about personal and shared values *audit your actions *be dramatic *tell stories about teacheble moments *take personal interest in everything *make a plan *create a model *break it up, and break it down *ask for volunteers *sell the benefits, benefits, benefits.

5. Guidelines for Encouraging the Heart- Try these strategies to recognize individual contributions and celebrate team accomplishments: *seek out people who are doing things right *personalize and publicize each recognition *link the recognition to a clear set of standards *celebrate individual recognition in a group *be creative about rewards and recognition *give recognition and rewards *tell the story of someone who exemplifies the standards you set *design the reward-and-recognition system participatively *provide feedback en route *schedule celebrations *be a cheer leader, in your own preferred way *stay in love with what you do *have fun, laugh, enjoy.

Highly recommended.

A must read for anybody in a leadership position. "The Leadership Challenge" gives a full idea of what it takes to be an effective leader in today's world. It may be in the corporate world, hospitals, military, schools etc, this book tells it like it is.

Grab a fresh highlighter and your notepad when you start to read this book. Hope that your competitors never read it. Why ? The book is packed with useful information. Information that I have used to help myself and clients increase sales... sometimes doubling sales because of what's in the book. Reading this wonderful book is like getting your hands on a secret weapon!

Roy Porter Senior Account Manager Burton, Livingstone & Kirk Newport Beach, CA

Too much advertising and promotion is done, to the tune of billions of dollars each year, and the creators of this so-called promotional material have little or no idea what the return on investment will be. As the co-author of this book, I can promise you that after reading it, you'll know how to predict the return on investment for your marketing dollars, increase the marketing budget, and decrease the chances you'll be laid off, downsized or right sized

This book is well-written and covers a vast scope. Contrary to what the title might lead you to believe, this book covers a lot more than just plain mediums. In fact, it offeres detailed information on just about any faction in the Skinlands that might interact with the Restless Dead: "Boardwalk mediums" found at carnivals and circuses the ruthless Giovanni vampires, even charlatans and frauds who possess no real talent, but manage to offend wraiths with their very presumption and chicanery.

This book is definitely worth the purchase price- it will enrich virtually any Wraith chronicle.

This is a fine resource for mediums, much better than the Quick and the Dead. The systems stuff is vastly improved, with a battery of new merits and flaws for mediums that I actually found useful (and can be used to supplement or replace the hedge magic paths for interacting with wraiths). There is some good stuff on summoning, a large section on Native American medicine men and shamanic dealings with the dead, a fresh look at many of the old ghost-dealing groups, and a new ability for those people who have had enough with wraiths shouting in their ears.

Topazian and Goldberg have written the bible of O and M Infections

Recommended in "A Basic List of Recommended Books and Journals for Support of Clinical Dentistry in a Nondental Library" in Bulletin Of the Medical Library Association, July 1997.

Call this one an important lesson in the key of life. To celebrate the 300th birthday of everyone's fave instrument, author James Parakilas has written a book at once awesome and astounding, a stunning cultural history, told in vivid detail and ample anecdotes and stunning color photographs, of the musical and social roles that the piano has played in its long and amazing career. (It became so popular, for instance, as the result of not just ingenious mechanical design but also ingenious marketing.) An important book whether your tastes run to Beatles or Berlin, Liszt or Liberace. Tickle on!

Three hundred years of piano history are presented in a fine book which considers the place of the piano in classical and popular music alike. From the design, manufacturing and styles of the piano to the individuals who made their mark in music history with the piano, this includes a delightful range of color drawings and illustrations along with a lively history certain to delight any avid fan of the instrument.

Mason, Gunst and Hess have done a great deal of consulting in industry which has provided them with an understanding of the design and analysis of linear and nonlinear models. In fact, I have had some direct experience with Bob Mason from Southwest Research Institute. When I was working at a medical device company owned by St. Jude Medical Inc., Southwest Research Institute had been contracted to analyze data from one of our animal experiments for defibrillation thresholds. As the new statistician in the company I needed to get acquainted with their work. The book illustrates many designs using real world problems. The first 5 chapters (88 pages) cover elementary statistical concepts and methods. The next 6 chapters (145 pages) cover designs. Most standard designs are covered including full factorials, balanced incomplete blocks, latin squares, fractional factorials and nested and crossover designs. There is also a chapter on response surface designs including rotatable designs, central composite designs and Box-Behnken designs. The rest of the book, some 368 pages, deals with statistical analysis of data from designed experiments. It makes a very good reference source.

The only disadvantage of it is that there have been many advances in the design of experiments since 1989 when the book was published. The topic of robust parameter design is not covered because much of the development occurred after 1989. Hints of the topic and mention of the Taguchi approach appear only on pages 108-110. To learn much more about the recent developments in the design of experiments see Hamada and Wu (2000) "Experiments". My review of Hamada and Wu can be found on Amazon.

Anova,multi stage charterlisti

The day I learned of Richard Lowe's publication of the diary and letters of James C. Bates I ordered the book. I read Bates' diary and letters first then re-read the entire book. I was fascinated! In his letters, Bates reveals his feelings much more often than most Civil War soldiers. I have often wondered how he survived such a dreadful wound. His description of forcing a tube down his horridly damaged throat would make anyone cringe. I knew a descendant of James C. Bates had the major's Civil War papers, but I had no idea where to find that person. This book is a valuable contribution to the history of a band of brave and dedicated young men who deserve recognition. Their brigade, made up of the First Texas Legion, the Third, the Sixth, and the Ninth Texas Cavalry, is the only Texas cavalry brigade to serve east of the Mississippi. They were transferred from the TransMississippi to Corinth in April 1862 and remained in the Confederate West to the end of the war. In the Official Records they were known as the Texas Cavalry Brigade and later in the war as Ross's Cavalry Brigade. I have a special interest in the Ninth Texas Cavalry and would have paid a large ransom for Lowe's book a couple of years ago. I am elated to add it to my library. My mother remembered two uncles, Reuben and Jesse Rogers, who served with the Ninth. Her stories and a few old family records started my research on the regiment ten years ago. In January of this year Avon Books published my book about the Ninth and Ross's Brigade - All Afire to Fight - The Untold Tale of the Civil War's Ninth Texas Cavalry. See Amazon.com for description and reviews of All Afire to Fight.

In our family my great aunt was the keeper of this rare piece of glass pressed into a frame, not even as big as a deck of cards. It was the likeness of my great-great grandfather, a supposed captain in some Confederate unit, captured in an ambrotype, a primitive form of photograph. I peered at him as a child as he proudly gazed back at me from more than a century ago, his hat flamboyantly cocked, beard prominent, and pistols visible at his waist.

We never knew what the war was like for him, the details of his life blurred by a sketchy oral tradition: Didn't know what he thought about the cause in which he was engaged; what he thought about his fellow soldiers; about the Union; about his family. We didn't know why he came back home to Arkansas, so we were told, in the middle of the war, only to die. Had he been wounded or taken ill? Had he deserted, or just walked away on a long odyssey home, as Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain soldier had?

These past few days, though, have offered a vivid and authentic picture of how life must have been for my forebear. Richard Lowe, Regents Professor of History at the University of North Texas, pulled all the strands of that world together in this book.

Captain, then Major, then Lieutenant Colonel Bates' letters and diary entries, along with Lowe's invaluable geographical markers and chronological waystations, give us a true picture of the trials -- physical, mental and emotional -- that must have weighed heavily on those young men in the maelstrom of war.

Bates' own psyche tilts at the eternal and epic questions of Everyman's life and death throughout the book. In some letters, the young Bates playfully teases his future wife Mootie. In others, the darker hand of war and combat color his mind. His lightheartedness with Mootie stands out against the grisly accounts of terrible battles and revenge. In one he reports that his men "set a good many" former slaves who had gone over to the Union side "to stretching hemp," a euphemism for hanging.

As Bates' letters and diaries continue throughout the war, his own accounts of rumors brought into his camp and his joy at optimistic accounts of victories reported leave us pitying his soul, for he knows not yet of the war's inexorable grinding on the Confederacy. Lowe's ample and informative historical notes and charts force us to twist privately in our seats as we read, unable from this vantage point to even vicariously enlighten or encourage Bates in his travels and battles through the Indian Territory, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

Bates would hear of nothing to dampen the spirits of the Confederate cause, evidenced by a letter to his sister, a scalding scolding, after she had written to him a particularly depressing letter. "Why all this gloom," he asks. "You permit your imagination to conjure up a thousand dangers & difficulties & causes for trouble that have no existence in reality." Then, after a tub-thumping sermon on reasons for bearing up under the strain: "Make an effort to appear cheerful at all times - and making the effort to appear so will soon really make you feel so."

Bates' optimism bears up even when he contemplates continuation of the war after the fall of Vicksburg and Atlanta.

Analyses of the deeper reasons for the conflict pepper Bates' writings, based many times on his reading of letters and papers captured from Union soldiers. Then, as if it is all a joke, he relates a story of how the belligerents, negotiating in 1861, came to terrible disagreement over which side would take Mississippi. Abraham Lincoln, who in this tale really didn't want anything to do with Mississippi, reluctantly offers to take half, then precipitating the war, since the South could not bear to have only half. Bates despised Mississippi. On his second trip there, he was obliged to admit that his Confederate troops were treated better than before, the locals having got a dose of the Yankee medicine since his last visit, a medicine which he felt had taught them to respect the presence of their own Confederate troops.

Bates' use of American slang still rings true in the ear today, with his talk of having the "blues" from time to time, but his prose is undeniably pristine and proper. His take on the ineptitude of Confederate leaders is poignant and his analysis of politics is deadly sharp.

Possibly while on a visit back home, he, like so many soldiers in other conflicts, left a code with his friend Mootie, which allowed him to pass along information to her which could have compromised the troops' mission have it been general knowledge. Lowe includes the two instances of the code in use, along with a facsimile of the actual key used in deciphering. How exciting and intimate it must have been to think of passing along privileged information along to his future partner.

Bates also follows the lead of many other soldiers, finding God, or "taking religion," after his brush with death and subsequent injury. He assures his mother that if he were to die, he would be reunited with her one day in the heavens.

The war for Bates ended with his inability to return home for a while. He spent time wandering Mississippi, in all likelihood working through events that changed him from a young innocent to a vengeful, physically shattered man.

Bates was lucky enough to have survived a minié ball wound to the mouth, and lived a productive life for some time after the war, unlike my "Captain," who died before the war was over. Even so, I, and many others who may have wondered about their forebear in their own carefully passed-along photo, now have something to go on, something that reveals the real world of a Confederate soldier, the hopes, the joys, the wrenching twists of morals and psyche.

We have found the Victory is a love story about life. MAN is created in Gods own IMAGE, THIER IS NOTHING HE CAN'T DO WITH THE HELP AND SUPPORT FROM HIS CREATOR. THIS BOOK FINDS WINNING A RESULT OF FOLLOWING GODS TEACHING.

We have found the Victory is not an expression of the writers ego but the authors story of how the creator has guided him to do his will for the greater good of humanity. It tells the story of the positive strength of mans will. No power on earth can defeat mans will to aid humanity.It is a love story, with life as the bride and mans will as the groom. THE MARRIAGE OF THE TWO PRODUCES ONLY POSITIVE RESULTS INSPITE OF STRUUGGLE FROM EVIL FORCES SET AGAINST IT.

Following on the steps of Wolves of the Sea comes this source book for adding Mongol vampires to your Dark Ages game. Although originally written for Vampire: the Dark Ages, it was so close to revised that there is no real need to change anything for Dark Ages: Vampire.
This is an excellent book, intended for both Cainites and Kuei-jin. After a nice little work of opening fiction, the book gives us some basic ideas of the theme, mood and the like, including a brief primer on Kuei-jin and the Middle Kingdom (helps to have Kindred of the East here). There is also a Mongolian lexicon, some recommended books, magazines (pull out those back issues of National Geographic), films (including Aleksander Nevsky! Woohoo!) and even websites. All useful if you want more info about the Mongols and their doings.
The next chapter is the good stuff, covering the history, geography and culture of the Mongols. Theres lots of juicy tidbits on mythology, food and drink and all that other stuff that better helps you understand the Mongols as an actual culture rather than as a "horde of barbarians". Brief notes are even made about various Mongol tribes! There is also a timeline of the Mongol invasion, and even a map of the Mongol empire, compared to some of its contemporaries. A good chunk of this covers Ghengis Khan, but theres other stuff as well. Beyond this, there is also some information on other empires such as Russia, Persia and China; all of whom are threatened by the Mongols.

The next chapter covers things from a vampiric perspective. A brief overview is given of all the Cainite clans (and some bloodlines) and how they react to the Mongols. Some clans, like the Assamites in Khwarazm and the Tzimisce in Russia find their territories threatened by the Mongol horde. Others, like Gangrel and Ravnos, find wandering with the Horde to be to their liking. Next we are given some notes on two other bloodlines exclusive to the Mongol empire. One is the Anda, a bloodline of Mongol and Central Asian Gangrel that has wandered the Steppe for milennia. The other, the Wu Zao, are forgotten Salubri that Salout abandonned in Asia.
Also in this Chapter are details on the Kuei-jin. The Kindred of the East have long claimed all of Asia as their domain and do not take kindly to outsiders, like the Anda, in their midst. This section covers the traditions and beliefs of the Black Tortoise Court, including some prominent corpse families and their interesting relations with the Hengeyokai and spirits of the earth. Following this is a chapter on mechanics and other juicy stuff. Some unique Animalism powers are given for the Anda, and some unique Mongol rites are given for the Black Tortoise Court. Also given are some new Merits and Flaws and a new path, focusing on Mongol concepts of honor and warfare. Some information is also given for combat and the like as well.
The book closes out with some pre-made characters, some of which are quite interesting like the yam courier and the wise woman. Some sample NPCs are given in the back as well. However, there is a definate focus on Cainites over Kuei-jin here.
All in all, this is an excellent source book for including Mongol characters. Enough stuff is given where you could even use this for playing other supernaturals like Mongol Dreamspeakers, Sons of Tengri, Hengeyokai, Shadow Lords, hsien, Eshu and who knows what else. The possibilities are really endless. If you want a historical game with Mongols, you really should get this book.

Wind From the East is an interesting and informative addition to White Wolf's hugely popular World of Darkness books. Giving information about the Mongol Hordes, it allows you to expand and enrich any of the games you play in the Dark Ages setting. It adds new possible plot elements, as well as loads of new character ideas, and some stuff that, like any White Wolf RPG Sourcebook, just generally makes for a good read.

As I stated earlier, Wind from the East focuses on the Mongols, but also allows for other easterners, namely the Kuei-Jin and a werewolf tribe called the Stargazers, to be added into your stories. It also gives you some insight into what the east was like in the Dark Ages and allows for whole chronicles there. This book is great and keeps White Wolf's tradition of awesome Sourcebooks going.

I bring home a lot of Christian books that I think my kids will read, but they rarely do. This one is different...my 8 and 10 yr olds are truly interested. They like to ask me the questions and see what kind of answer I come up with. With the scripture included, it's a devotional study in disquise!