Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV

Book Description

This is a controversial new study of the life of one of the most charismatic and neglected late medieval English kings. Everyone seems to have heard of Richard III, but here for the first time Jonathan Hughes reveals reveals the emotional and spiritual life of his elder brother Edward.

Customer Reviews:

Check Around.......2007-10-19

I really don't have anything against free enterprise but I found this book from the Harness Racing Hall of Fame for $20.00, same book brand new 10/15/07. The idea it's out of print is nonsense and one must pay better than $40.00 for it is nonsense as well. It's a wonderful read about a true superstar of the horse racing business and just as Billy wouldn't over pay for yearling's don't over pay for this book. Check around. the proceeds also go for the upkeep of the Hall of Fame if bought through them.

Great Book.......2000-10-20

This book has a touching story about a great man. This book can make you laugh and cry. If you want a book this one is one of the best.

The Review.......1999-12-23

This book had the best info that I have ever seen.Every chapter was interesting.It was the best Biography that I have ever read. I suggest you read it.I loved it.

Customer Reviews:

Great photos, great text, great tone-exactly what I wanted!.......2001-10-31

I enjoyed this book very much...it has an amusing touch of irreverence while still being very much a "fan" book. The photos are superb; there are definitely some jolting star shots here thatI KNOW I've never seen before. A lovely book which provides the requisite facts about the "hunks" but also has an element of whimsy & fun. I tried to track this book down before a year before locating it; it was worth the wait!

Gorgeous!.......2000-03-23

Magnificent photos, interviews and stories of a lost era. I especially enjoyed the Tony Curtis, Jeffrey Hunter, Jeff Chandler and Sal Mineo sections. The writing matched the photos - very upbeat and done more like an old fashioned movie magazine than a "tell all."

Customer Reviews:

Not worth your time or money.......2006-12-13

AS a practicing reading specialist I find this text lacking. If you really want to be an effective literacy leader I recommend Michael Pressley's Balanced Instruction that Works.

Real World Activities.......2006-02-18

This book is great-- easy to read, thorough, and with real world applicable material.

Average customer rating:
Making Gingerbread Houses: Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-154 (Storey Publishing Bulletin, a-154)
Rhonda Hart Poe
Manufacturer: Storey Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Gingerbread Houses

Making Gingerbread Houses: And Other Gingerbread Treats

Gingerbread Houses: Baking and Building Memories

Gingerbread: 24 Inspirational Houses and Decorative Gifts to Make

Gingerbread for All Seasons (Abradale Books)

ASIN: 088266493X

Book Description

Since 1973, Storey's Country Wisdom Bulletins have offered practical, hands-on instructions designed to help readers master dozens of country living skills quickly and easily. There are now more than 170 titles in this series, and their remarkable popularity reflects the common desire of country and city dwellers alike to cultivate personal independence in everyday life.

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A rather disappointing book for the general reader

At least this book is readable

Good introductory real options book for beginner or manager

Best user friendly treaty on Real Options.

Shamelss self-promotion

Real Options: Managing Strategic Investment in an Uncertain World (Financial Management Association Survey and Synthesis Series)
Martha Amram , and Nalin Kulatilaka
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Real Options, Revised Edition: A Practitioner's Guide

Real Options: Managerial Flexibility and Strategy in Resource Allocation

Real Options Analysis: Tools and Techniques for Valuing Strategic Investment and Decisions, 2nd Edition (Wiley Finance)

Strategic Investment: Real Options and Games

Project Valuation Using Real Options: A Practitioner's Guide

ASIN: 0875848451

Amazon.com

Huge payoffs in business usually entail embracing lots of risk. That's the message of Real Options, by Martha Amram and Nalin Kulatilaka. The authors argue that standard models of evaluating strategic investments fail to consider the element of risk fully. "Uncertainty creates opportunities. Managers should welcome, not fear uncertainty," write Amram, a California-based consultant, and Kulatilaka, a Boston University finance professor, in describing the "real options approach." The book provides plenty of theoretical case studies, formulas, and charts that demonstrate how to shape business strategies using a system based on option-pricing. The method can value everything from undeveloped land to untried products. "With it, market leaders will understand how value is created in an uncertain environment and will know how much risk they are bearing," the authors write.

Risk is also inherently dangerous--that's an unintended lesson of Real Options. The two Nobel Prize-winning economists whose work serves as the foundation for this book--Robert Merton and Myron Scholes--were the brains behind Long-Term Capital Asset Management, the notorious hedge fund that was rescued under a plan engineered by the Federal Reserve. With that caveat in mind, business planners and managers should pursue Real Options with their eyes wide open. --Dan Ring

Book Description

In capital investing, as in life, you always have options. In today's extremely turbulent world, managers recognize how risky the most valuable investment opportunities often are, and how useful a flexible strategy can be. That's why they want to know all their options. Yet many current financial assessment tools fail to identify what investors can do to capitalize on future uncertain events. Martha Amram and Nalin Kulatilaka suggest a smarter new way to think about strategic investments in terms of real options. By applying options thinking--the concept behind the recent Nobel Prize-winning work on financial options--to the evaluation of nonfinancial assets, this innovative approach brings a financial market discipline to the evaluation of a company's opportunities. Using real options theory, managers can more effectively target crucial opportunities to redeploy, delay, modify, or even abandon capital-intensive projects as events unfold. Corporate executives in finances, investments, and project management should share this book with decision makers in information technology, strategic planning, corporate restructuring, venture capital, and law. Through timely case studies, the authors show managers how to use real options to evaluate investments and create exit strategies in RandD, product design, contracts, and information technology. By linking strategic vision and tactical project decisions, Real Options helps to improve capital investment planning and results.

Customer Reviews:

A rather disappointing book for the general reader.......2005-05-02

I was rather disappointed by this book. I was hoping for something which could help explain to business managers why processes such as IT delivery are uncertain, and the value of delivering flexible solutions. The initial part of the book makes a lot of strong qualitative statements of exactly the right sort:
- There is great value in breaking up large projects in uncertain markets
- Options (flexibility) create value out of uncertain events.
- Exit options which allow you to step away from a planned path, even if relatively expensive, may have significant value.
- An option such as an exit option, can make an investment viable when it would fail a traditional NPV test.
- Small speculative investments can enable larger investments to benefit from learning and to be much more accurately targeted.
- It may create greater value to start many projects and abandon more, rather than aiming to abandon a minimum number.

Unfortunately the remainder of the book then supports these statements only for a very limited set of circumstances. The Real Options approach only seems to work if the option can be translated into (or at least mapped onto) a tradeable financial security. There's no real attempt to provide tools to evaluate internal uncertainty, such as the delivery uncertainty common in IT projects, or the value of flexibility except where it maps to significant investment decisions.

The book does do a good job of explaining that real world situations are non-linear, with value which changes as a result of natural volatility, over time, and as a result of one or more decisions. Traditional NPV-based approaches greatly undervalue flexibility, insurance, learning and platform investments, and can't really deal with this non-linear aspect. Simply increasing the investment discount rate, which is the usual way of dealing with such problems, doesn't bring the correct focus onto uncertainty and total risk.

However, the mathematical basis for Real Option valuation is not well explained, and I found the processes difficult to follow. I suspect that the authors implicitly assumed a certain familiarity with economic and financial market techniques and terminology, which limits the value of this book to those seeking, as I was, to apply the techniques to other fields. It also left me puzzled as to why simpler approaches, such as Decision Tree techniques, can't be used instead.

Surprisingly for a relatively short book the text is very repetitive, and too often turns into a blatant advert for the Real Options approach compared with others, rather than making the case on its own merits.

Hindsight is a great thing, but it is unfortunate that this book praises Enron as an example of success through options manipulation, where we now know this was largely a "long company" scam. Some of the other examples, quoted at the height of the Internet boom, have also not stood the test of time. However, these should not be seen as invalidating the approach, merely as evidence of how uncertain things may really be.

This book provides some good ideas, and if your focus is major business-critical financial transactions it may be very useful. But I'm still looking for a good book on how to generically value flexibility.

At least this book is readable.......2004-04-15

The only saving grace about this book is that it is readable. However, the reason for this is because there is not much to learn about RO from this book. The author's talk about numerous examples and the "concept" of how RO was applied. But, you will not learn the actual process of using RO, unlike Copeland's or Trigeorgis' book.

Good introductory real options book for beginner or manager.......2004-04-05

It is a good introductory book on real options targeted at the audience of managers rather than experienced financial practitioners. Its contents covered financial options, binomial pricing and Black-Scholes model where the last ten chapters or so are case studies dedicated to applications of real options where it gives readers an idea how real options can be applied in diverse industries.

It makes a good and easy read for anyone who wants a quick flavor of real options without going through too much of the horrible maths that derivatives and real options seems to have !
I personally enjoy reading it from cover to cover.

Best user friendly treaty on Real Options........2003-06-01

This is an excellent book on the subject. It is the most readable and user friendly book on the market on Real Options. You don't need to understand Greek to tackle this book unlike the other ones. The author clearly explains the Black Scholes option model, the foundation of option valuation. They then illustrate how this model can be applied to non option business investment opportunities. The authors establish a real option framework to handle your business decision. It explores many practical cases in detail, so you get a good feeling for this approach. The authors also flesh out when it is better to use Black Scholes vs. Monte Carlo simulation in order to make a business decision.

Shamelss self-promotion.......2001-05-30

This book is another good example of a phenomenon I call "Fad-peddling" at its worst. "Real Option Valuation" is just a fancy new name consultants-for-hire have made up to describe a set of problems economists like Dr. Pindyck have called "contingency claims" problems for years. Given the history of the two terms, I prefer "contingency claims", because of its record as a term used by economists in academic journals and because "real options" sounds too much to be like some new fad, like "reengineering" or "liberation management."

Most of the other reviews are absolutely right: this book seriously lacks any quantitative explanation. No need to look for kind words; this is a serious oversight. And yes, this book does read like a long sales resentation.

While the authors adequatley describe broadly how economists and financial executives solve contingency claims problems (generally using binomial methods, simulation, or partial differential equations), they don't teach any of these methods in any useful way. At best, after reading this book, you will be able to recognize whether or not your organization has any "real options".

Beyond the quantitative short-comings of this book, however, there are some flawed fundamentals about their whole approach: this book treats real options as a new finance panacea for the 1990's, and suggests that the world of finance in 20 years will be a very different place because of these revolutionary ideas. Contingency claims problems are limited to a very specific set of economic phenomena with specific criteria. If the criteria are not present, contingency claims models fall apart. Consider the amount of abuse something as well-known as the black-scholes option pricing equation is subject to when it is applied to "real options valuation": the black-scholes equation is a function of two variables, primarily: time and stock price variance. When you take this equation and try to apply it to, say, the valuation of an option to market patented drug, how do you define variance and time? Time in an option contract is fixed in the contract. Variance is empirically observable from stock prices. Plus, how do we know that the value of drug patents resembles stock prices (log-normal process)? What if it is more like the behavior of a commodity (mean-reverting process)? And where are we going to get the data from anyway? In that case, the black-scholes equation needs to be abandoned and an alternative partial differential equation needs to be developed. But who is going to do that? At what cost? Obviously, at a certain point the benefits derived from exactly modelling your options is eclipsed by the cost and effort involved in doing so. The scariest part, however, happens when you realize that the greater the variance (risk) and the longer the timeframe chosen, the greater the final value of a project or investment. Now the project manager who wants to sell ice to the eskimos has the quntitative methods available to justify such a high risk project. (Just think, the project manager could sell this project to top management as a long-term investment anticipating the melting of the polar ice caps, when the price of ice in Greenland is expected to go through the roof).

This book tries to reach too far, suggesting that phenomena which never should be valued as contingency claims can be valued as such. Real options (or contingency claims) are best treated as a very specialized set of quantitative techniques used to model very specific phenomena which a company may or may not be subject to see "Investment under Uncertainty" by Dixit and Pindyck for an inventory of those phenomena). Push the envelope too far and the paper tears as it does here.

Average customer rating:
Real Options: Managing Strategic Investment in an Uncertain World
Martha and Nalin Kulatilaka Amram
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KXBZJM

Customer Reviews:

Anais Nin confronts New York City.......2004-03-10

Anais Nin began a letter to her father, on the ship that carried her, her mother and brothers, away from him, away from Europe and to New York City. She was 11. The letter was never sent, but instead developed into a diary that would become legendary by the time she reached her late 20s. Henry Miller helped feed the legend by stating that, once published, Anais Nin's diary would take its place beside the great literary revelations of the 20th Century. Upon publication in the 1960s, many felt that the acclaim was justified. Though original plans called for the publication of only one volume, demand was so great that seven volumes in all would be eventually be published.

In this present volume (1939-1944), Anais has taken refuge once again in the United States, escaping the war that has engulfed most of Europe and destroyed her much beloved literary community back home in Paris. This is the second time she has had to immigrate to the US, and its culture seems just as alien and unwelcoming as it did the first time. Nin finds the transition particularly difficult because her "European" writing style is not warmly received; American audiences are more interested in realism than sur-realism. Her work is deemed obscure and un-publishable. But Anais Nin does not cave to pressure. She forges a community with other artists in the Manhattan literary world, creating something close to what she had in Paris with Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell.

I enjoyed this volume because, well, I'm fascinated with Anais Nin's work, persona, and overall career. I enjoy its panoramic quality, and that it gives me insight into a world of which I would otherwise be totally ignorant, as I was merely two-years-old when Anais Nin died in 1977. But I think it would be true to say that general readership would probably stop at volume two of this series. In other words, unless you are heavily interested in Anais Nin, this volume and all future installments probably will not grab you. If you are like me, then you have four more volumes in this "expurgated" series to look forward to, then four volumes of the "unexpurgated" series, and yet four more volumes of "early diaries." See you then! :)

Andrew Parodi

Anais Nin confronts New York City.......2004-03-10

Andrew Parodi

all female writers/readers should read about.......2000-07-14

anais was so frank & true to her feelings& what she wrote was warm & sweet,though her erotic story was still a bit leg-behind than henry miller's, she's still a very good female writer.

Descovery of an excellent diarist!!!.......1998-03-20

I found out some volumes of A.Nin's series of Journals some months ago and I was really amazed : how precise and how many literary encounters! Being a student in American Literature and an apprentice diarist myself, I think Nin's skill for autobiography and her sense of time are optimal points to last longer in diaries!

Average customer rating:

The Diary Of Anais Nin Volume 3
Gunther Stuhlmann
Manufacturer: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UHF4W2

Average customer rating:

The Diary Of Anais Nin Volume 3

Manufacturer: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GLU242

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Diary of Anais Nin Volume 3 1939 1944
Anais Nin
Manufacturer: HARCOURT BRACE & WORLD
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000Q9Q2X4

Average customer rating:

Not surprising that nobody read it

Learn about the internal makeup of the conservative movement

Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Ascendacy
Nina J. Easton
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0743203208

Book Description

Gang of Five is the story of the conservative activists of the babyboom generation, who arrived on campus in the 1970s in rebellion against everything "sixties" and went on to fight for social and political change in the '80s and '90s. As she redefines the development of modern conservatism, former LA Times staff writer Nina Easton also narrates the rise of the babyboomer conservative movement through the intertwining lives and careers of five major political figures --Bill Kristol, Ralph Reed, Clint Bolick, Grover Norquist, and David McIntosh -- a few of whom are now household names but whose backgrounds are largely unknown. That is, until now. Gang of Five tells the interlocking stories of these conservative rebels, the cultural forces that shaped them, and their three-decade-long war against the political establishment. Even though they came to their politics as social pariahs, they've managed to rise to positions of national influence in the 1990s, and, most important, still maintain control of the national agenda.

Customer Reviews:

Not surprising that nobody read it.......2006-10-08

First, lets consider the source. Nina appears to be a very nice person and very attractive. But she is a liberal. She writes for the Boston Globe, not a publication who is tolerant of conservative views. This is akin to having Yankees fans review the Red Sox fans conduct. Its not only skewed but also deliberately contrived to create a sinister appearance and motive of the 'five'.

Second, she chose five people of which only really two were actually major movers in the GOP or conservative movement. Maybe she should have asked around first if she actually knew any conservatives she could have surveyed for some names to start with.

Mostly, this book is harmless and a rehash of already public information. Ralph Reed is a smooth talker and more moderate in tone than Pat Robertson. Boy, that's gonna be a headline someday.

I'm sure that liberals will gleefully read about how evil, heartless and conniving those conservatives are trying to organize things so they can win elections without the public knowing it. Its hardly news and its hardly unusual considering that we have already had to live through Carville and Begala.

Learn about the internal makeup of the conservative movement.......2002-07-23

Being a Leftist, I didn't know much about how the conservative movement actually works. After reading this book, I think I understand it a little better. I had always known that the Republican Party is fractured, with religious conservatives and economic libertarians forming a coalition of people who have little in common with one another. This book showed me that there are even more divisions than that.

It also showed me how the conservative movement has changed. In this profile of five relatively young conservative leaders, you won't find any mention of Jesse Helms as a role model. The Republican Party is trying to smooth the edges a little bit.

Of the five leaders whose lives are profiled (Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Clint Bolick, David McIntosh, and Bill Kristol), I found Ralph Reed's to be the most interesting. I really didn't know how moderate he is. After his almost comical exploits as a young man trying to rig elections, his maturity and conversion come off as being genuine if incomplete. I loved the parts of the book where Ralph Reed tries to moderate the conservative christian message and is undercut by his own followers, who are much more interested in being anti-abortion crusaders than in crafting a complex social policy. When he missteps, it is usually by presuming to speak for them in ways for which they would not approve.

Grover Norquist comes off as a Darth Vader-like character, a man almost completely blinded by his ideology. Reading about his torpedoing of a potential Colin Powell run for the presidency and about his thinly disguised sympathy for separatist militia groups, one is reminded of the ugly face of conservatism that earned it the traditional brand "mean-spirited". But one also realizes that people like Bill Kristol disapprove of that sort of thing vociferously, and still call themselves conservatives. Norquist operates under the supposition that 60% of the people of the country are Rightists, and that Democrats only win by cheating, but it seems that not even 60% of Republicans would meet his definition of a Rightist.

This book chronicles the intellectual development, the rise to power, the internal conflicts, the illusions and delusions, the lessons learned through hard experience, and the ultimate disappoinment of the Right's leaders before, during, and after the Republican Revolution of 1994. As a liberal reader, I recommend it as a great primer. I don't know what a conservative reader would think of it.

Book Description

In recent years, the desire for greater creature comforts and material success has come to dominate the goals and values of most Americans-in the pithy language of the bumper sticker, "He who dies with the most toys wins." Often, however, this "progress" takes a heavy toll on our communities and environment. Many in the progressive and environmental movements lament this development, and argue that not only does our politics fail to offer solutions, but it does not even seem to recognize the problem.

In Triumph of the Mundane, Hal Kane offers a unique assessment of how and why our day-to-day lives have changed, and considers the wide-ranging impacts of those changes. Using a variety of indicators of behavior-distances between family members, the things we own, and the pace of our lives-he traces the social transformations that have occurred in recent decades, and considers the profound effects of those changes on our values, relationships, and physical surroundings.

Kane takes a first step at defining a new set of political goals, as he identifies questions that leaders and policymakers must address if they are to reinvigorate our public discourse so that it can improve the quality of our lives. He provides examples of powerful new ways of measuring the things we really care about, and offers an important means of recognizing the often-overlooked issues that underlie much of the environmental crisis.

Triumph of the Mundane explores in a fresh, engaging way the social causes and consequences of environmental degradation, and is a thought-provoking work for anyone interested in environmental issues or the future of American society.

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