As both an adventure traveler and a vehicle enthusist this book was a relief to read. Mr. Stephens and Podell relate an experience that I would love to duplicate, an around the world adventure ripe with hi-jinx and romance. In a the current world of SUV commercials preaching get out and drive for fun, these guys show how much you can have without your heated seats and cell phone. I love the idea of packing all your junk in a rustic old truck and heading around the world. Of course it would be great to get all the sponsors that they had, but it would be a little bit harder to be as out of reach today especially if you had to report to the man. This book is fun and exciting and reason enough to quit you job, sell your $35,000 exploder, er Explorer, buy a real truck and use the left over money to start driving. Don't worry you'll figure out how to eat, get gas, get out of trouble and make it home. If you want to come home.

Anyone who has ever traveled anywhere by car (and who hasn't) will absolutely love the adventures and misadventures of Stephens, Podell and crew on this over-the-road around the world trip in a 60's era Toyota Land Cruiser. It's amazing they came back alive!

Every bit as entertaining as the best of Cahill and Bryson but less long-winded, the adventure is related in a page-turning series of concisely written and entertaining passages that will have you howling with laughter and empathizing in pain.

You will love this book!

Loved this book the first two times I read it in the seventies and this new publication is just as much fun the third time around. It is suspenseful (will they make it?) and has just enough romance so that WOMEN can find it exciting and wonder, "could I have gone along?" I'm probably too sissy, but I love you guys for doing it. You are men's men and definitely women's men! What an adventure to remember always.

What can be said that hasn't already been said about this great book?

Joseph Balkoski has crafted (to me, not just written, but crafted like a gem) a superb history which will stand as a tribute to all those who not only served in the Blue and Gray Division, but to all who served in the infantry divisions in the Normandy campaign.

We see the 29ers from their training camps in Maryland and Virginia, to deployment in England, to Omaha Beach to the bloody, but triumphant entry into St. Lo. Along the way, we see the personalities, General Gehrhardt, Major Tom Howie, Glover Johns and Charles Cawthon endure the training, D-Day and the hedgerow slaughter.

But Balkoski just doesn't rehash old facts. He compares the 29th to its German counterpart, the 352nd Infanterie Division. He shows German methods and compares the weapons used by both sides and explains why the fighting in Normandy was an attacker's nightmare and a defender's dream.

In the end, the 29ers bested their foemen, but not without cost. Mr. Balkoski has written a tribute to them that will stand the test of time.

I am an officer of the Maryland Army National Guard--a 29er--who has had the privilege of knowing Joe Balkoski and of walking the staging areas of Britain and the beaches of Normandy with him. Joe's book tells a story which is detailed, accurate and engaging. For me and for those who serve alongside me today in the Blue and Gray Division, it is a story with particular relevance. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand soldiers; for anyone who wants to understand the National Guard; and especially for those members of the 29th Division who want to know where we've been and what we're made of.

Activated National Guard Units, the 29 Div., landed on Omaha Beach along with the 1st Div. on D-Day. There they faced 120-foot high cliffs directly beyond the murderous beach. The quickest way off the beach was through the Verville and Les Moulins draws. Those familiar with "The Longest Day" or "Private Ryan" know what happened on that beachhead and on those draws. To read about it is particularly chilling. The 29th was not stopped that day. They clawed their way up those bluffs into Verville-sur-Mer and St. Laurent, on inland to the Aure River and, after 43 days of continuous combat, they took St. Lo. Balkoski provides a vivid account of the fighting beyond the beachhead, in the hedgerow country. I read this book after visiting the beaches at Normandy. I should have read it before that visit. The maps of Omaha Beach are excellent and the action is told in an interesting and fast moving style.

I enjoyed this book, and read it in one day, pouring through the various chapters and one tragedy to the next. My only complaint is that many of the chapters were excerpts from other books, and the stories sometimes felt unfinished. Those excerpts would cover the hit (or near miss) of the summit, then cover some sort of trial to the participating climbers. The climbers may or may not survive the trial, and then that would be the end of it. I actually craved a little bit more of the post-expedition soul-searching.

Like everybody else, I read "Into Thin Air" and bought more mountaineering books, this being one. Luckily, climbers tend to be a pretty literary lot, because the basic theme of all these books is : Damn, we're out of food/its cold/ I can't feel my feet/hands/nose/my brain is swelling up/I lost my way/tent/sleeping bag/gloves/I almost (or you DID) fall off this cliff. All this is followed by the endless anticlimax of the summit if reached and, worst of all, endless navel contemplation about the meaning of it all. I don't know why this stuff is so compelling, but there it is. I read this book in four sittings when I had a lot of more important stuff to do. Then I went out and bought Everest: The West Ridge by Tom Hornbein. And I live in Florida , have never been higher than 5,000 feet and have never climbed anything higher than the roof of my house. Go figure. I will say that these mountaineering books have a significant collateral benefit - they scare the hell out of the wife.

This book contains the greatest short stories about climbing that I have ever read. Each story is unique and as entertaining as the other.

There's no shortage of books on this subject and I've probably read three-quarters of them. This one comes closest to cracking the code. In fact, the author uses that exact word in describing how marketers must go about 'cracking the brand's genetic code'.
While some may find the heavy reliance on his experiences at Nike and Starbucks limiting, I think it's quite instructive. Mainly because while one of these brands, Nike, was created largely using traditional mass media, the other achieved its preeminence doing exactly the opposite.
In either case, Bedbury does a great job of defining what a brand is, why it is of such financial importance to a business, how to go about discovering its 'genetic code' and how to maximize a brand's value and ubiquity. And he does it in a very readable fashion. Definitely something anyone who places any stock in branding will want to read.

Scott Bedbury's new book, A New Brand World acts as a wake up call at a time when many companies are giving in to the financial pressures imposed by a weakened economy and corporate consolidation by deserting Brand Marketing and with it Brand responsability. As Scott Bedbury points out in his highly entertaining and well written book, creating and maintaining a Brand is hard work and requires a long term committmenton from Senior Mangement down to everyone in the company. Brand vitality incompasses not only having a good advertising campaign, but also having a corporate committment to consistantly maintaining the brands core values and the trust created between the consumer and the Brand. In eight quickly paced chapters, Bedbury serves up a combination of case histories, insider stories and an impassioned arguement for Corporate responsabilty that speaks to his experience and observations of what worked and did not work for some of the worlds greatest marketers. With direct experience at the most Senior Marketing level with some of the Worlds most successful and respected brands including Coke, Nike and Starbuck's, A New Brand World is the ultimate insiders guide to what goes on inside that giant corporate hairball alluded to in the book.
A great read and an action plan for successful brand building, this book should be a must read for anyone involved with or wishing to become involved with Brand Marketing.

This book is one of the best on the subject of brands--why some fail and others succeed long-term. The classic marketing and business dilemma--product focus versus brand focus, is presented and evaluated carefully. Moreover, the book details how to define, build, manage, and evaluate a brand from a number of perspectives. The material is relevant given that the book just came out in February of 2002 and many recent brand topics are critiqued too--from Microsoft's legal woes to the dot-com bubble, and the driving forces that brand managers and executives will face in the coming years.

The author gives reasons why branding is so critical today (and in the future) and describes relevant, poignant brand experience stories as supporting evidence to the 8 principles for building a 'killer' brand. This is a versatile book -- the concepts presented lend themselves to any business and all product/service categories.

The author explains many subjects that continue to haunt brand managers today: how to develop a brand through analyzing customer needs--both physical and emotional, analysis and definition of brand values that must embody a brand and every employee within the company, and how to use one's gut to help keep the brand's core values on track as the company grows or is faced with challenges from changing business environments.

I especially liked the section on brand development reviews. These regularly scheduled reviews on a number of brand issues and topics will help any marketer who develops (or inherits) a brand by reinforcing what is important for long-term brand development.

a good read, but can be confusing for kids. It takes a while to comprehend all of the Shakespearian langauge, but is very interesting. It is boring at parts.

The Winter's Tale contains some of the most technically difficult solutions to telling a story that have ever appeared in a play. If you think you know all about how a play must be constructed, read The Winter's Tale. It will greatly expand your mind.

The play opens near the end of a long visit by Polixenes, the king of Bohemia, to the court of his childhood friend, Leontes, the king of Sicily. Leontes wants his friend to stay one more day. His friend declines. Leontes prevails upon his wife, Hermione, to persuade Polixenes. Hermione does her husband's bidding, having been silent before then. Rather than be pleased that she has succeeded, Leontes goes into a jealous rage in which he doubts her faithfulness. As his jealousy grows, he takes actions to defend his misconceptions of his "abused" honor that in fact abuse all those who have loved him. Unable to control himself, Leontes continues to pursue his folly even when evidence grows that he is wrong. To his great regret, these impulsive acts cost him dearly.

Three particular aspects of the play deserve special mention. The first is the way that Shakespeare ties together actions set 16 years apart in time. Although that sounds like crossing the Grand Canyon in a motorcycle jump, Shakespeare pulls off the jump rather well so that it is not so big a leap. The second is that Shakespeare captures entirely different moods from hilarious good humor to deep depression and remorse closely adjacent to one another. As a result, the audience is able to experience many more emotions than normally are evoked in a single play. Third, the play's final scene is as remarkable a bit of writing as you can imagine. Read it, and marvel!

After you finish reading this play, think about where your own loss of temper has had bad consequences. How can you give yourself time to get under control before acting rashly? How can you learn to be more open to positive interpretations of events, rather than dark and disturbing ones?

Love first, second, and always!

The Winter's Tale is a lot of things: heart-breaking, exhilerating, funny, beautiful, romantic, profound, etc. Yeah, it's all here. This is one of the bard's best plays, and I can't believe they don't teach this in schools. Of course, the ones they teach are excellent, but I can see high school kids enjoying this one a lot more than some of those others (Othello, King Lear).

The story is, of course, brilliant. King Leontes goes into a jealous rage at the beginning against his wife Hermione. Leontes is very mistaken in his actions, and the result is tragic. Shakespeare picks the story back up sixteen years later with the children, and the story works to a really, really surprising end of bittersweet redemption.

This is one of Shakespeare's bests. The first half is a penetrating and devestating, but the second half shows a capacity for salvation from the depths of despair. Also, this being Shakespeare, the blank verse is gorgeous and the characters are well drawn, and the ending is a surprise unparalleled in the rest of his plays. The Winter's Tale is a truly profound and entertaining read.

Eliot Asinof's Eight Men Out gave an excellent depiction of the first World Series played after WWI. This series had everything, one of the greatest baseball teams of all time (Blacksox) playing a Reds team that was supposed to get swept. It also had the most famous scandal in baseball history, along with millions of baseball fans, after a devastating war, trying to watch a good wholesome series and forget what happened in WWI. Unfortunately they got a fixed series. It was a very unfortunate ending to the likely Hall of Fame careers of Buck Weaver and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, but that's the price one must pay for gambling. The only reason why this book didn't get five stars was the lack of post trial coverage and careers after their early exit from baseball. Other than that I recommend this book to baseball fans of all ages and guarantee that no matter how much of a history buff you are you can learn something from this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I only knew of the Black Sox Scandal of 1919 on a superficial level. This book gives you the details of all the conversations, meetings, and actions that took place between the players, gamblers, and management which led to 8 players of the Chicago White Sox baseball susposedly throwing the 1919 World Series. Asinof has surprising detail of conversations that took place and talks about each person involved as if he knew them personally. You wonder how he received all this info in the age before tape recorders and microphones were prevalent. He certainly did impressive research and the book should be commended for that.

What he doesn't do is take sides and seems to write the book as a distant observer. But at the end you seem to feel somewhat sorry for some of the players involved, especially the ones among the eight (Buck Weaver, Joe Jackson) who didn't necessarily throw their games but were banned for life anyway because of their knowledge of the conspiracy. What would you have done in their position?

Overall, it's most likely the best summary of one of the most incredible and darkest events in sports history. It's must read for all sports fans.

In its time (1965) this book really blew the lid off the long-sanitized version of the Black Sox scandal available to the public. Its readability, depth and refusal to glorify any of the participants are what make it the starting point for any baseball lover seeking the true story of the whole sordid affair. Its placement in greater historical context is especially well done; the reader is reminded that it did not occur in a vacuum. WWI was just over, Prohibition was coming, and the dominant national mood was 'we're very noble, we won the Great War' (all historical debatability of that point aside). Game-throwing was nothing new to baseball, as Asinof points out, but the idea that a full third of a team would throw a World Series was a body blow to what had become somewhat of an egotistical nation.

While some new information has come to light in the last thirty-five years, it has only supplemented what Asinof learned--to my knowledge none of it has been refuted. Considering the number of basements and old offices likely cleared out in the intervening time, and at least one definitely pertinent discovery that I'm aware of (the Grabiner notes), this is quite an accomplishment. Recommended both as baseball history and as a portrait of a lusty, turbulent time.

Matthew Lewis wrote "The Monk" in ten short weeks at the age of nineteen. Immediately the subject of controversy upon its publication in 1796, Lewis was prosecuted and subsequent editions of the book were heavily censored. Coleridge described it as blasphemous, "a romance, which if a parent saw it in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale." Yet, "The Monk" was so popular that its author became a minor celebrity-coming to be known as "Monk" Lewis--and Sir Walter Scott prounounced that "it seemed to create an epoch in our literature." And whether "The Monk" truly created an epoch in English literature, or merely marked the early apogee of a genre, it stands as a stunning example of the Gothic novel.

"The Monk" tells the story of Ambrosio, the ostensibly pious and deeply revered Abbot of the Capuchin monastery in Madrid, and his dark fall from grace. It is a novel which unravels, at times, like the "Arabian Nights", stories within stories, a series of digressions, the plot driven by love and lust, temptations and spectres, and, ultimately, rape, murder and incest. It is sharply anti-Catholic, if not anti-clerical, in tone, Ambrosio and most of its other religious characters being profane, murderous, self-centered hypocrites cloaked in displays of public piety. And while it sometimes seems critical of superstition, "The Monk" is replete with Mephistophelian bargains, supernatural events, appartions, and spectres, as well as entombment and dark forebodings of mystery and evil. It is, in short, a stunningly entertaining, albeit typically heavy-handed, Gothic novel, perhaps the ultimate classic of the genre.

Matthew Lewis wrote "The Monk" in ten short weeks at the age of nineteen. Immediately the subject of controversy upon its publication in 1796, Lewis was prosecuted and subsequent editions of the book were heavily censored. Coleridge described it as blasphemous, "a romance, which if a parent saw it in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale." Yet, "The Monk" was so popular that its author became a minor celebrity-coming to be known as "Monk" Lewis--and Sir Walter Scott prounounced that "it seemed to create an epoch in our literature." And whether "The Monk" truly created an epoch in English literature, or merely marked the early apogee of a genre, it stands as a stunning example of the Gothic novel.

"The Monk" tells the story of Ambrosio, the ostensibly pious and deeply revered Abbot of the Capuchin monastery in Madrid, and his dark fall from grace. It is a novel which unravels, at times, like the "Arabian Nights", stories within stories, a series of digressions, the plot driven by love and lust, temptations and spectres, and, ultimately, rape, murder and incest. It is sharply anti-Catholic, if not anti-clerical, in tone, Ambrosio and most of its other religious characters being profane, murderous, self-centered hypocrites cloaked in displays of public piety. And while it sometimes seems critical of superstition, "The Monk" is replete with Mephistophelian bargains, supernatural events, appartions, and spectres, as well as entombment and dark forebodings of mystery and evil. It is, in short, a stunningly entertaining, albeit typically heavy-handed, Gothic novel, perhaps the ultimate classic of the genre.

I read this in college for a Gothic, Terror, Romance class. From the looks of the cover (I can't help but be lured or deterred by them), I thought I was in for a complete waste of time. Far from it! This is gothic at its most perverse.

Yes, the time it took Lewis to write the book (8 wks. or so) is astonishing, but it's what he was saying about Gothicism, in general, that is important : Readers want the horror, to be scared out of their wits. The popularity of 'The Monk' may have proved his point. Lewis went against the beliefs of authors like Anne Radcliffe who felt that terror could seem real without the violence and blasphemous machinations.

Lewis chose a character, a Monk, who seemed so dramatically pious that his FALL would shake the foundations not just of religion, but the boundaries of good and evil and how religion can justify them. At the middle of this pulse-pounding romp, we get the tale of the 'Bleeding Nun'. I was bothered by it at first because I was getting into the monk and his eventual demise, but this departure from the main tale proved just as fantastically chilling.

If you like this one, try 'Frankenstein' by Shelley, and 'Drakula' by Stoker. They are the best of the in-your-face grotesque and symbollically allusive classics. Radcliffe's novels (The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Italian) are great ways to get a sense of how the gothic was idealized....until Lewis burst on the scene with this shocker!

I purchased this book after quickly previewing it in the local bookstore and finding that it had A LOT of pictures for my four year old son to look at. I thought that it would be a great bedtime read for us as we anticipate our trip. Although we have pretty much enjoyed it, it is really not that kind of book. Some of the pictures were a little scary for him (the witch in Snow White-- too realistic and eerie- and the photos of the Haunted Mansion) and many other pics were cartoons rather than actually pics of the parks. The intended audience is kids who can read and complete written activities alone or with little assistance. The language is geared for this age group without being too simplistic and there are great games, activities and ideas for kids getting ready for a WDW vacation(you write right in the book!). An awesome book for the count-down days preceding the trip but an EVEN BETTER book for the long plane, car, or bus trip! What a fantastic idea! Needs more pics of the parks but even still a great activity with interesting page layouts. We'll be saving this book for when my son is a little older.

I loved this book because it is really organized and its so precise i can read it during those long lines for my favorite rides.....i am going to Disney World in a few months so im looking forward to use all the hints i found in the book.

I love these books! I have all of them since 1996. Now that I am 14, I feel that I may be too old for them! I still Love them anyway! I do recomend this book if you are planning a trip to Walt Disney World with you Children and I hope you have a wonderful time there I know I would!!

If you're curious about Taoism that's good. A dedicated scholar is even better. But if you can't manage to do that in your hectic daily life, behold this book! It explains the Tao in an easy going style with plenty of humor and lots of good old common sense. Even concepts that seem otherworldly will start to make sense when you read it a second time. It is thorough, yet manages to avoid intimidating the reader with archaic language. There are many books on the tao, from the spiritual to the scholarly. This one manages to bring it straight to the people with no frills. And while some reviewers think it advocates drug culture, I believe the author is patently aware that you cannot preach to most people or convince them to stop self destructive behavior even if they know you're right....so it is best to arm them with practical knowledge and let THEM do the changing. And that is the essence of the Tao. Ever changing--ever learning. Some will read this book and hungrily move on to more serious books on the Tao, while others will want to keep it in their backpack and think on it for a long time. I am doing both.

I found Barefoot Dr's book on the Tao excellent. It explained concepts in a clear and hip manner and provided exercises to incorporate the teachings in a practical way. The work is also in my opinion quite comprehensive.

This is definitely not a book for those who want to be scholars of the Tao. However, I thought it was a great tool for those who actually want to participate and use the Tao in day-to-day life. The author stresses personal responsbility and helps you reconsider both what is really important to you and how to concentrate on it. It seems especially relevant to younger folks or those in the club scene, but I imagine anyone with an open mind and an interest in living healthy and happy would enjoy it. The writing is very lively and you really get a good sense of the guy's personality.

I admire Mr. Pinault's courage to "burn the bridges", especially in the very secretive world of management consulting. I have been inside the private club of the Big Five in three different countries for seven years now, and I was amazed to see how much I could relate to Mr. Pinault's experiences. It is a fast-paced life, with a lot of fun and hard work, very talented young and ambitious people, and endless opportunities for learning good and bad things (specially lying). But as in Medicine sometimes, ethics are frequently twisted in search for easy money and a quick path to the top. Besides any orthographic errors, I think this book does a good job on exposing the dirty side of the business for both clients and consultants wanna-be. Consultants can be a valuable and necessary help in some cases, but clients need to make sure that they are in control, or they may become the next milking cows. For the MBAs out there, it is a good chance to loose your innocence, because the glamour comes for a hefty price on your values and personal life. First question to make yourself: "what makes me a this Big Time Consultant (as the partner made clients believe that I am), only a week after I joined the firm?" Let me know if you find the answer...

This book is part Michael Hammer (Reengineering the Corporation), and part Hunter Thompson (Fear and Loathing). Lewis Pinault's drug of choice: adrenalin, adrenalin generated by the fast-paced life of management consulting.

Other reviewers have missed this obvious fact: the demons in the title are Pinault's own. But they are also his personal demons writ large onto the organization's psyche. What the psychologist and poet R.D. Laing did for the individual and schizophrenia, Pinault has done for management consulting and "organizational madness" - he has made the experience of corporate consulting madness comprehensible, if not understandable, without providing a specific treatment or cure, and without judgment, beyond his personal accountability.

For myself, a low level consultant operative (an IT contractor of some thirty years experience), I can attest to witnessing from the trenches many of the behaviours Pinault delineates. Many times what I saw from the high powered consultants made no rational sense from my own or my client's points of view, but I dismissed my lack of sight as simply the shortcomings of my vantage point.

With impeccable education, credentials, and experience, Pinault has provided the bird's eye view, the proverbial 20,000 feet high look at the consulting landscape below, and now it turns out I was right all along. The only "rationality" is to make more money for the high powered consultants; nothing else makes sense, including why so many clients put up with it.

The prose describing Pinault's experience is sometimes difficult to navigate, as if he has too many ideas in his head all at once, and must sputter them out before he forgets even one. And the "consulting tracts" of strategy that close each of Pinault's chapters are not easy to parse, being somewhat abstract and overly-laden with "management speak". But they are the keys to understanding the real world strategies used by management consultants to pick the pockets of all but the most savvy clients.

"Business Process Reengineering", as practiced by the big boys, is not Michael Hammer's variant, but a perversion. Pinault reveals it for what it really is: inane exercises in chearleading, brainwashing, camouflaged reductions in force (staff cuts), cost-shifting (rather than real elimination of wasteful processes), and the sleight of hand by which process detail is alternately revealed and concealed. Consultant work that adds real value to the enterprise and to its end product or service, is left undone, and that need for added value remains, until someone else, with more integrity and more sharpened knowledge, performs that substantive task.

Treat this work not as a scholarly treatise on management consulting, nor as an ethical rant, but rather as one man's personal journey from career madness to sanity. As such, it is unrivaled.

Thank you, Lewis Pinault! What you have done will help keep me sane for the rest of my career!

Very few recent business books have been written with such a superb combination of thrilling drama, industry confession, and informative insight. As I read this book I was equally captivated by the stories of corporate "spying" hidden under the cloak of strategic industry research, as well as by the careful analysis of the management consulting industry.

As a consultant currently working at a big Five (or Four) firm, and as an MBA hopeful, I recommend this book to anyone who is remotely interested in working in the consulting industry. Mr. Pinault provides a peak into the lives of consultants, spinning a web of glamor as well as well emptiness. His confessions are honest and almost vulnerable. Simultaneously, he provides a historical account of this very private and elite profession.

What's most intriguing to me is the effect the book has. On the surface, the book appears to be an industry expose and confession. However, the effect, at least for me, is not one of repulsion but of attraction. I can honestly say that, after reading the book, I want to be a management consultant even more than before. I wonder if Mr. Pinault still has a love/hate relationship with the industry.