And terrific! With Groundwork, Robert Welch distills into one heady brew four hundred years of Anglo-Irish conflict and the historical relationships between the Condon and O'Dwyer families. He does this by presenting four- or five-page stories of individuals and events at seemingly random dates and stirring them together. Some stories are in the first person, giving an effervescence to the characters and an immediacy to events, even very ancient events. Other stories are in the third person, providing color and allowing the reader to "store" the information for future use. The individual stories are very short, the cast of characters is very large (necessitating a dramatis personae at the beginning of the book), the time frame is huge, there is no real "plot," in the traditional sense, and time here is cumulative, rather than linear.

Despite all this, Groundwork is not difficult reading. Somehow Welch manages to make it all work, and even a casual reader with little or no background or interest in the history of the Irish people will find it absolutely fascinating and often thrilling. On the most superficial level, the daily lives of the Condon and O'Dwyer families in the 20th century capture the reader, who can identify with them and share their tribulations--a girl who finds herself pregnant and abandoned, a son who becomes a monk, a father whose children die during an epidemic, a wife who finds that her husband has been unfaithful.

Welch is not writing a melodrama here, however. These events are related to the ongoing history of the Irish people, with some entries here dating back to the Elizabethan period. Betrayals in the 20th century parallel some depicted in earlier centuries; the struggle to survive as Irishmen in a country dominated by the British is similar, regardless of century; the seemingly thankless efforts of scholars to preserve the history, culture, and language of the Irish continue unabated through time; and the desire to achieve respect, both individually and as a people, never wanes. As Katherine Condon remarks on the death of her mother, "I'd like to be with her among the dead, and along with all the Condons and O'Dwyers that have lived here for so many centuries. We are all alike, all sad and thoughtful, and full of rancour and feeling." And Welch includes it all in this book.

Welch has grabbed the most complex Irish histories and squeezed them into 202 pages of excellence!.

EVERYTHING is covered.. This book is definately a must!, even for a historian his or her self!.

An AMAZING, enthralling, terrifying, and realistic account of the tragedy and beauty of two families in County Munster. Robert welch transforms a true Irishmans history and ancestry into a mind-blowing piece of, what is sure to become, an artifact of uncensored and factual Irish belief and history...

This book MUST be read, the experience is too much to miss...

Read this book. It gives great insight to the late 1950's and lays a foundation for how the far left got their start in America. This book was written in the late-50's, but is very relevant even today.

Excellent treatise that was the documentation of the founding meeting of the organization known as The John Birch Society. Clear and concise discussion of the history of the world and the conspiracy which seeks to enslave mankind. Must reading for any real patriot and friend of the United States Constitution.

If you love truth and are not afraid of the facts concerning the United States government today, then read this book! Robert Welch was a brillent man and great American Patriot who possessed the ability to see things within the U.S. political institution as "they really are" and not as most selfish politicians would have you believe. This book opened my eyes to "a whole new world" and answered many of my questions concerning the problems within our government today. Read it!

The account of John Birch's life is a great testimony of God's power today and how God can use individuals to accomplish His will. John Birch was a Baptist from Georgia and he was killed by Communists in China where he worked for the US Army and also started missionary work. John Birch is a great role model for a Christian, and for all those who desire integrity, character, strength and honor in a man's life. In fact, this book has led me to join a Baptist church in Tennessee since John Birch was strong for the Lord and he was a good Baptist. It is so revealing and amazing to read the letters he wrote shortly before his sacrificial death. This book is heartily recommended. The only flaw about the book is that the author seems not to be a faithful Christian because he expresses belief in evolution and does not focus on John Birch's life of faith, and his relationship to the Lord's church. But the words and actions of the missionary John Birch speak louder than the author's opinions and views.

In April, 1942, the Rev. Birch, Baptist missionary, was eating supper somewhere in China, and was approached to aid the crews of the Doolittle Raiders to safety from behind enemy lines. He volunteered for military service as a chaplain at that time. He was approached by Gen. Claire Chennault of the American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) who had other ideas. Rev. Birch was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant on July 4, 1942 and served the remainder of the war as an intelligence officer, but preached whenever he could. Ten days after the cessation of hostilities, August, 1945, by then a Captain, John Birch was brutally murdered by Chinese Communists of Mao Tse Tung's 9th Route Army.

Isaak August Dorner, one of the greatest theologians of the 19th century, is not as well known today as he should be. If enough people read this great essay of his, that may change. In it, Dorner offers a thorough and fascinating account of the historical development of the classical doctrines of God's immutability and simplicity, while, at the same time, presenting sharp criticisms of that doctrine. Dorner shows that any account of God's nature that is adequate for a sound piety must represent God in such a way that the world can have a value for Him, and this entails that He be able to create a world of free beings whose choices He can neither determine nor know in advance. This, in turn, entails that the actions of creatures must be able to have "a creaturely impact on the divine decree." Dorner shows that allowing God to change with respect to His knowledge and will in no way derogates from God's perfection. In particular, the ethical nature of God is safegaurded since, even though God changes His specific will towards a creature according to the creature's behavior (i.e. God will respond differently to Mother Teresa than to Hitler), God's actions always flow from His perfectly good nature; He always responds to creatures in the way the befits the most perfect possible moral gooness.

The historical section of Dorner's essay is rendered particularly delightful from the fact that he not only discusses such prominent figures as Augustine, Aquinas, and Scotus, but also lesser known protestant Scholastics, such as Quenstedt and Gerhard, as well as the acute 17th century Socinian, Conrad Vorst. This alone makes the book a treat for anyone interested in little explored aspects of the history of theology.

All in all this essay is a profound meditation on some of the most difficult and central aspects of Christian theology. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The translation itself is fluid and very readable, and the book is prefaced by a penetrating discussion, by Robert Williams, of Dorner and of the content of this essay. My only criticism is directed at the cheap book binding process that Fortress Press currently employes. I have only had this book for a little over a year, have not subjected it to any unusual sorts of stress, and yet every page of it is now loose from its back. The same thing has happened, in short order, to all the paper back books I possess published by Fortress Press. It is unfortunate that a translation this good of an essay this great should be treated in so shabbily by Fortress Press. So great a Lutheran Father as Dorner deserves better from a press devoted to preserving and furthering the Lutheran heritage.

the book is pretty good because it's very funny stories in it there are a decent amount of them well just read the book it's awsome

I previously read "Jack Welch and the GE Way", also by Slater and published in 1999, but I never read the original version of "Get Better or Get Beaten". This newer version of "Get Better..." contained a substantial amount of material that was already covered in more detail in "the GE Way" book. Except for some of the material covering events since 1999, I think "the GE Way" was a better choice of the two, especially if you're looking for more detail and analysis. In many ways I felt like I was just re-reading the other book. On the other hand, if you're looking for sort of the 'Cliff Notes' version and want some good insight into Six Sigma, this newer, smaller work by Slater is certainly satisfactory. There's only marginal benefit to reading both of these.

This is the first GE's Jack Welch book I ever read. I bought it because the title is so far the best amongst its keens, "Get Better or Get Beaten", which is a norm in today's competitive world. Remarkably, the content is of the same quality as its title. It is so well written that I finished it in 1.5 day.

In fact, the core concepts or the secrets are nothing new. Quality and Re-engineering gurus like Peter Drucker, Philip Crosby, Tom Peters etc had stressed the importance of quality, customer orientation, corporate culture, employee involvement blah blah blah for decades. It's just that Jack Welch has been so successful a real life practitioner and advocate that nobody can neglect. Think about the 6 sigma phenomenon and you know what I mean.

In case you just want to know the secrets without the elaboration, or that you cannot afford one, go to the table of content (Thanks to Amazon) and have a look. All the secrets are already there. (Sorry, Mr. Slater). However, I still think it is a good collectible for your personal library.

p.s. I had worked in an acquired subsidiary of a Fortune 20 company. I am sorry that what happened there was far from what Mr. Welch preached. The result is: The leader five years ago (when it was acquired) is now the fifth in the market.

This is one of the few best books on leadership I have read in a long, long time. The others, which compliment this book are Jack Welch's book, "Jack", and Norman Thomas Remick's book on the philosophy behind all the good advice from Mr. Slater and Mr. Welch called "West Point". Read "Get Better" to get better, then read the others to get even better yet. And what's nice about it, they're all available right here on Amazon.com.

This book presents a good overview of Jack Welch's way of thinking. It must be read as an "overview" as we are talking about a 20 years management history in 90 pages. The summaries (Masterclasses) at the end of some chapters are very good and help to fix Mr. Welch's ideas and how to use then in our daily work. The bibliography presented at the end of the book should be used if one wants to go deeper in some points presented slightly in the book.

Most articles and books about Mr. Welch overly segment his thinking. As a result, you miss the core for the details. Mr. Heller has overcome this problem, and puts the individual elements of what GE has done under Mr. Welch into a useful perspective. The book also contains helpful exercises for applying these concepts to your business.

Mr. Welch is a master of focus. He took GE and turned its attention to the most significant opportunities. This was accomplished both by drawing attention to certain areas, and by eliminating many others.

Mr. Welch's great strength is that he is open to and hungry for new ideas. As a result, his thinking has improved a lot from the beginning of his tenure as CEO. A modest weakness of this book is that it doesn't say enough about how the later ideas sometimes contradict the earlier ideas. For example, the book shows that Mr. Welch was always focused on cost-cutting. In the beginning, he often did this in the most brutal way . . . with massive layoffs. Only very late in the game did he discover the quality processes that produce larger and more valuable cost reductions. Such quality processes flourish when employees have stable employment and the focus is on improving their knowledge and autonomy. Yet, the concepts of Six Sigma were well known early in his tenure as CEO. Perhaps GE needed to been even more eager for new ideas than it has been. On the other hand, GE seems to have been effective in adapting to the Internet in a timely way.

The book is organized around the following principles:

(1) Turning managers into leaders

(2) Using everyone's thinking in the enterprise

(3) Moving ahead faster than competitors in meaningful ways

(4) Expanding stock price more rapidly than earnings

(5) Using new trends the influences to your advantage.

These concepts are then translated into practices for you to use in three master classes:

(1) Exercising leadership

(2) Changing company culture

(3) Breaking boundaries and limitations.

This book will be most useful to companies and leaders that are in many businesses, have a lot of bureaucracy and rigidity, and are not in high growth areas. The examples are almost all drawn in ways that are relevant to those problems. On the other hand, the idea of focusing is useful for any business.

My main disappointment in the book is that it did not address GE Capital, which has been the source of most of GE's success under Mr. Welch.

Mr. Heller draws extensively on the primary books about Mr. Welch that preceded this one. Unless you want a lot more detail, you will not need to read those. There is a bibliography to help you find them in case you decide you do want to read them.

After you examine this situation, I suggest that you take Mr. Welch's observation seriously that he did not move fast enough. If your company is going to be operating as well as it possibly can in five years, what changes have to be made before then? How can you get through these needed changes in the fastest, smoothest way? The future environment will probably not allow you to take as long to change as Mr. Welch had.

Focus on the places where leadership can make the most difference!

In the years before the American Right ceased to function as a true counter establishment force the John Birch Society sent shivers down the spine of left wing politicians and their pawns. Our author Robert Welch, the Society's founder and leader, was not shy in pointing out the role played by Establishment types, Republicans as well as Democrats, in America's decline. This book centers on the Eisenhower Administration and the advance of Communism and leftism that it collaborated with. It is not for the feint of heart but when one surveys the wreckage which Ike left behind (all herein documented) anti-Communist Russians, German prisoners of war, the political destruction of McCarthey, Taft and the South it seems in retrospect that the old Belmont candy manufacturer might have been on to something. This is an important political document of the Amrican Right (old school) and deserves a reading or a re-reading today.

This book was considered one of the most controversial non-religious manuscripts of its day. The author felt it was too "hot" for publication in 1956, when Eisenhower was a very popular president. A few copies circulated among some of Robert Welch's friends, and some updates were made in the next few years. The national press "uncovered" a copy after Welch's new organization, The John Birch Society, proved to be a growing threat to the status quo. Hostile reviews began appearing across the country of an unpublished manuscript!
People began asking for the book.

Mr. Welch decided in 1963 to publish The Politician in self defense. Once the book was printed, demand by bookstores suddenly dried up, and reviewers quit mentioning it. Hundreds of thousands of copies were eventually sold, but that is another story...

The chapter on Operation Keelhaul is worth the price of the book. Eisenhower's role in the forced repatriation of refugees and anti-communists to the Soviet Union at the end of WWII is well documented. It is a nauseating account of treachery and politics in the twentieth century.

The maneuverings leading up to the 1952 GOP presidential nomination are also revealed in the book, along with many other historical details of the Eisenhower years not commonly known. Hundreds of footnotes list primary sources, mostly major newspaper stories, to verify the narrative.

The value of the book is not limited to students of the 1950's. Great insight into present day U.S. foreign policy is hidden within the story of Ike. The uncanny similarity of Clinton's globalism to Bush's "New World Order" makes more sense after reading this groundbreaking book.

This should be a must read for all High School United States history classes. Highly controversial in it's day, this book shows Eisenhower's connections to the American left and his softness toward the communist menace and how those attitudes were reflected throughout the Eisenhower administration. Also insightful for showing how the elite in our country manipulate our political system for their own selfish gain.

This is a coffeetable-size book that won't require coffee to read and enjoy. With luscious historical and contemporary illustrations, it takes a serious look at the early rural history and the pell-mell modern development of one of the most populous regions of the country -- "perhaps the definitive suburb." The book ranges from Brooklyn to Montauk. It is produced in cooperation with the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, and the authors clearly know whereof they speak. "Chronicles of leadership," a final chapter, has well-illustrated profiles of local civic institutions and businesses, prepared by them, that turn up a surprising variety of facts about organizations from Brookhaven National Laboratory and Long Island University to Computer Associates International and Marders Nursery.

This is a rather superficial book with questionable value. It presents 31 Jack Welch's slogans and without almost any discussion declares them genius. Jack Welch is a very interesting manager whose methods and results deserve a lot more detailed approach. Each of the slogans or ideas should be analyzed, discussed and explained on a good example. Otherwise, as the book is written, the ideas can not be taken seriously by any professional. This book serves as a good introduction to Jack Welch as a manager, but if you want to really learn something, better buy a different book.

There are a series of great books available on Amazon.com that much better explore the world of Jack Welch and GE. After attending a workshop I picked up three from Amazon and two at the library. This was the weakest of the three. First, this is a poorly constructed paperback version. It is just plain cheap. Feels cheap and looks cheap. Thats it for the layout and format.

Second, many of the paragraphs seem to be cut and pasted from one chapter to another. I felt that I was re-reading essentially the same ten paragraphs scattered throughout the book. Very frustrating because it indicates either laziness by the author or redundancy to be pedantic.

Next, many books claim to have a special insight since the author was given rare access to the GE training center known as the "pit." This book claims that as well and quotes Welch at a number of public meetings...in an attempt to reinforce the concepts.

As Welch soon retires, I wonder if these same books will hold the interest they now capture. You are better served by more narrative, substantial texts on Welch and his management style. As always, Amazon readers can rate reviews and many loyalists vote against critics. I have a great admiration for Welch, and what he managed to accomplish. This book does neither him, nor his accomplishments real justice.

Reading this "guide for leaders" I wondered if Welch would look at it and laugh at its simplicity.

I received a copy of the book while I worked for GE several years ago, and picked it up again recently. When I received the book I felt Jack Welch's ideas were simple, straightforward and obvious. It is only after working for other companies that I realize the genius behind them, and how rare it is for these "simple" concepts to be played out elsewhere in corporate America. Jack Welch is truly a business visionary, and this book outlines many of his ideas, albeit in sketch format. His ideas about re-structuring, de-layering, change management, corporate speed and employee empowerment were all way ahead of their time. Thirty-one of his best ideas are presented here, but unfortunately, with little substance behind them. I would suggest that this book is a great place to start if you are interested in GE's business and corporate philosophies, however, to get more in depth analysis and explanation you will need to look elsewhere. I would recommend this book for a trip, as it is good airplane reading, and may spark some ideas for your business.