Sovereign: A Celebration of Forty Years of Service

Customer Reviews:

#4 will always be the greatest hockey player of all-time........1999-12-17

I have a web site dedicated to the greatest hockey player of all-time, Bobby Orr. If you are searching for something for a Bobby Orr fan this would be a great gift. Packed with many great photos and stories this book will defenitely be cherished. You will also be greatly thanked.

Bobby Orr & the Modern Era of Ice Hockey!.......1999-11-23

"Remebering Bobby Orr" is a great little book you will cherish, and a great gift for any young kid who loves the game. Much of this has been said before, but true fans can never get enough of # 4! Great Pictures, and hopefully someday a definitive biograpy will get written about the man who changed the face of hockey, and began the modern era.

Book Description

While films such as Rambo, Thelma and Louise and Basic Instinct have operated as major points of cultural reference in recent years, popular action cinema remains neglected within contemporary film criticism.

Spectacular Bodies unravels the complexities and pleasures of a genre often dismissed as "obvious" in both its pleasures and politics, arguing that these controversial films should be analyzed and understood within a cinematic as well as political context.

Yvonne Tasker states that today's action cinema not only responds to the 1980s shifts in gendered, sexual and racial identities, but reflects the influences of other media, such as the new video culture. Her detailed discussion of the homoeroticism surrounding the muscleman hero, the symbolic centrality of blackness within the crime narrative, and the changing stature of women within the genre addresses the constitution of these identities through the shifting categories of race, class, ethnicity, nation, sex and sexuality. Spectacular Bodies then goes on to examine the ambivalence of supposedly secure categories of popular cinema, questioning the existing terms of film criticism in this area and addressing the intricate pleasures of this neglected form.

Customer Reviews:

spectacular analysis.......2000-01-11

A fantastic contribution to film and cultural studies - very insightful and interesting -essential to those interested in feminist film thory, masculinity, action film.

Book Description

Johnson's savagely funny [book] is a grunt's-eye view of fear and loathing, arrogance and insanity in a dysfunctional, dystopian closed community. It's like M*A*S*H on ice, a bleak, black comedy."-The Times of London

Customer Reviews:

Legends of Ice and Bureaucracy.......2007-03-03

Anyone approaching this book as a sociological critique of human mores in an extreme environment is looking for a different book. Oh, there's plenty of sociology, plenty of critique, and plenty examples of human mores in an extreme environment; but these are the simple byproduct of an intelligent man's opening his eyes and recording what he sees as an Antarctic contract/wage worker.

On the bounds of journalism, not quite Gonzo, not quite straight reportage, the author manages to weave enough Antarctic lore, daily observation, and well-researched history into the narrative, so that the reader is ever mindful of the locale. This alone is a feat of work, for at times one would swear from the corporate shenanigans at the Bottom of the World that this was written as a script for the movie version of "The Office," and rejected for being too real.

The end result--as is the case with most accounts of human bureaucracy in a sublimely inappropriate venue--is hilarity. Think of it as a Monty Python sketch on a continental scale, funded by the American government, subcontracted to an arms manufacturer, and played by a diverse cast of world citizens who can never escape the moral of the story: that things just aren't fair.

Original and a fun read.......2005-11-10

For every scientist stationed in Antarctica, there are five support crew including dish washers and trash men. Luckily for us the author, Nicholas Johnson, was among them.

Johnson's story is an insider's view of life on the bottom of the planet for those of us who will probably never make it to the South Pole (which may be a good thing, after reading about the frosty welcome tourists get from the "polies"). The author combines hilarious anecdotes about day-to-day life with the history of the continent's exploration. The photo of the Easter Island snowman alone is worth the price of the book.

Having been there..........2005-09-13

Having spent 12 years working "on ice" and at every US Station and Ice Breaker, I can say this: Johnson has only scratched the surface on the lunacy, idiocy and buerocratic hell the US Antarctic program has become.

Since Raytheon has taken over as contractor, it's been one laugh after another. HR isn't about helping employees, it's about sticking to the corporate policy with a velvet hammer.

It'll be a fine day when the last Rathioyd leaves Antarcitca, but like the old song by The Who, it'll be "...meet the new boss, just the same as the old boss..."

Having met and known a few Antarctic treaty signatories, I'm sure they're doing a slow spin in their graves.

You will enjoy this book. I promise........2005-09-09

Big Dead Place is a great combination of Antarctic history and Antarctic humor. It's fascinating to see that a place that could be described as an icy hell has somehow become a beaurocratic one as well. While the tone of the book is lighthearted, with an emphasis on humor, it's clear that Johnson cares deeply about Antarctica. This book gave me a great insight into Antarctica, one that I doubt I could have gotten elsewhere; it did so whilst being funny! If you get this book, you will be entertained and you will learn something about what is probably the strangest place on the planet. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Big Dead Place.......2005-09-02

Somewhat interesting, and at times amusing. Although at times there is potential for depth in critically evaluating living at the bottom of the world, the author rarely goes there. He is stuck on the absolute surface of things, rattling along, I suspect, on pot or some other substance. He seems to have no perspective from which he can organize his observations into any kind of meaningful structure.

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American Combat Vehicle Handbook (Twilight: 2000, 2nd edition)
Loren K. Wiseman
Manufacturer: Plenum Publishing Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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A must have for managers

A textbook for M.B.A. students.

A priceless collection of Drucker's most significant work

Thought Provoking with Startling Conclusions

The Master of Management on the profession of management

Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management
Peter Ferdinand Drucker
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Harperbusiness Essentials)

Management Challenges for the 21st Century

The Practice of Management

ASIN: 1591393221

Amazon.com

No one has influenced the practice and study of management more than Peter Drucker. Ever since the publication of his first management book in 1946, Concept of the Corporation, which was based on his study of General Motors, Drucker has devoted his career to shaping and developing the art of professional management. In fact, Concept of the Corporation is considered to be the first book on management, period.

On the Profession of Management is a compilation of Drucker's work that has appeared in the Harvard Business Review over the last 30 years. Review editor Nan Stone has organized 13 articles into two sections. The first, "The Manager's Responsibilities," focuses on the work of management, making decisions, and practicing innovation. The second section, "The Executive's World," looks at how managers should manage in a knowledge-based economy--indeed Drucker was one of the first to consider the implications of knowledge economies.

If you think Drucker has lost anything over the years, the book's insightful and provocative preface, "The Future That Has Already Happened," will surely change your mind. On the Profession of Management is an insightful and informative read, a tribute to one of the finest minds of the 20th century.

Book Description

"This book should be an essential guide for managers, consultants, and business students."

-Publishers Weekly

For nearly half a century Peter Drucker has inspired and educated managers-and influenced the nature of business-with his landmark articles in the Harvard Business Review. Here, gathered together and framed by a thoughtful introduction from former Review editor Nan Stone, is a priceless collection of his most significant work. Infused with a perspective that holds new relevance today, these essays represent Drucker at his best: direct, wise, and challenging.

Customer Reviews:

A must have for managers.......2006-01-27

Peter Drucker has 60 years of experience teaching and writing about management. This collection of essays, first published in Harvard Business Review, outline Drucker's views on managerial responsibility. Among other things, this book also includes his insights on making more effective decisions, improving staffing choices, locating innovative opportunities, and aligning your theory of business.

Drucker outlines the five essential management principles:

1. Management is about human beings. Your task as a manager is to make people capable of working together.
2. Management is embedded in culture. You must be able to use parts of your history, tradition and culture as building blocks for a common corporate culture.
3. Management is responsible for growing an organization. Integrate training and development into your organization at all levels.
4. Use yardsticks like market standing, innovation, productivity, human development, quality and financial results to measure and improve performance.
5. Look for results outside of your company, in the products and services you deliver, not relative to internal processes within the company.

Drucker also outlines six steps to guide decision-making:

1. Classify the problem. Is the problem unique to your company, or the beginning of a more general problem?
2. Define the problem. Make sure the definition explains all the observable facts.
3. Define the boundary conditions, like objectives or goals, that your decision must satisfy. When the conditions change, your decision must change with them.
4. Decide. Usually you will have to compromise eventually. Decide what is right.
5. Take action. Make sure your employees know what the decision involves, and who is expected to do what.
6. Get feedback. Gather information on the effectiveness of your decision. Make sure your decision is still relevant to current conditions.

A textbook for M.B.A. students........2005-02-07

It should be mandatory for every M.B.A. student in the world.

A priceless collection of Drucker's most significant work.......2004-05-19

For nearly half a century Peter Ferdinand Drucker (1909- ) has inspired and educated managers-and influenced the nature of business-with his landmark articles in the Harvard Business Review. Here, gathered together and framed by a thoughtful introduction from the Review's editor Nan Stone, is a priceless collection of his most significant work.

One of our leading thinkers on the practice and study of management, Drucker has sought out, identified, and examined the most important issues confronting managers, from corporate strategy to management style to social change. Through his unique lens, this volume gives us the rare opportunity to trace the evolution of the great shifts in our workplaces, and to understand more clearly the role of managers in the ongoing effort to balance change with continuity.

Now, these important articles and essays are strategically presented here to address two unifying themes: the first examines "The Manager's Responsibilities" while the second investigates "The Executive's World". Accompanied by an interview with Peter Drucker on "The Post-Capitalist Executive", as well as a thought-provoking preface by Peter Drucker himself, a complete picture of management theory and practice emerges, both as it was and as it will be.

Infused with a perspective that holds new relevance today, these essays represent Drucker at his best: direct, wise and challenging. Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management, sure to be studied, debated, and enjoyed by everyone concerned with management, everyone concerned with management, is a timely offering from one of the most respected and prolific authors to appear in the Harvard Business Review.

At 90, Peter Drucker is, by all accounts, the most enduring management thinker of our time. Born in Vienna, educated in Austria and England, he has worked since 1937 in the United States, first as an economist for a group of British banks and insurance companies, and later as a management consultant to several leading companies. Drucker has since had a distinguished career as a teacher, including more than twenty years as Professor of Management at the Graduate Business School of New York University. Since 1971 he has been Marie Rankin Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management, Claremont Graduate University in California, where he still teaches in the fields of management and business policy. He is the founder of The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, and has counseled numerous governments, public service institutions, and major corporations.

Drucker is a writer, teacher, and consultant with a long-term business perspective second to none. His twenty-nine previous books have been published in more than twenty languages and span sixty years of modern history beginning with The End of Economic Man (1939) and Managing in a Time of Great Change; Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices; Innovation and Entrepreneurship; The Effective Executive; Managing for Results and The Practice of Management. Nan Stone is the editor of the Harvard Business Review.

Thought Provoking with Startling Conclusions.......2002-09-10

This is one of the most, thought provoking books, I've read this year. In the first part of the book, Business philopher, Peter Drucker protrays and verbally the business model of today, and highlights the necessary interactions of managers with the model. In the second part of the book, Drucker breaks away and reveals a series of startling revelations about today's business.

The theory of business is what Drucker, defines as "what a company gets paid for." Drucker states when big companies get in trouble they blame "complacency, arrogance, mammoth bureacracies", as a plausible explanations. However, the problem's root causes are rarely identified and the prevously stated explanations are rarely right. Most companies fail, to perform well, at what they get paid for.

Drucker defines the parts of the business environment, as: environment (society and its structure and the market), mission (customer ), (core competencies) and technology. Why is this important? The assumptions about environment, mission, and core competencies must fit together. Drucker drives home the point by contrasting the sucess of non-profit organizations with profit organizations, stating we can learn from the success of non-profit organizations, namely: well define mission, lack of deep management hierarchy, individual responsiblity, a deep understand of individual roles and purposes, and cohension between expectations and results. Secondly, the theory of business must be known and understood through out the business. Drucker stresses the importance of learning from the non-customer. And Lastly, the theory of business must be tested constantly.

The Effective Decision process involves the follow sequence of steps: 1. Classify the problem 2. Define the problem 3. Specify the answer to the problem 4. Decide what is right rather than what is acceptable 5. Build into the decision the action to carry it out 6. and test the validity and effectiviness of the decision against the actual course of events. This is an high level sketch outlining a model for effective decision.

Drucker provides two methods, to help make, people decisions. The two creative approaches are: determine if the right people has right qualifications, perceptions, and talents; and make sure the individual understands the job. The first approaches advocates careful selection of the individual, by determining, how well the candidate fits the job assignment. The second approach measures the new manager's understanding of the job. The process requests, the new manager to write on paper, what they think will make them sucessful, in their job. Senior management reads the paper to determine, if the manager has grasped an understanding, of the job, and revalidates their decison about the individual being the right person, for the job.

The discipline of innovation encourages managers to separate the reasons for successful management, into two groups: systematic and non-systematic innovation. Both systematic and Non-systematic opportunies exist within an company or industry because of unexpected occurences, incongruties, process needs, and industry and market changes. Systematic innovation begins by analyizing the sources of opportunity. Innovation is perceptual and conceptual by definition and innovators must go out look, ask, and listen. Effective innovations start small. Small Innovations can lead to large implementations. Without innovation the company will go out of business. Innovation keeps a company competitive in the market and capable of meeting customer needs.

Technology has created a great diversity of information. In order for a manager, to be effective, managers need to identify the information they need to effective perform their jobs.

The world is moving to a society of organizations. Companies are moving to global economies of scale. People interact with various organizations to achieve results. Because of this new organization theory, outsourcing is preferred when no direct management hierarchy exists to a Vice President. Outsourcing provides high skill specialist, management, and senior management. Companies are achieving better results organizationally by outsourcing business process where possible.

Management is responsible for creating the knowledge worker. Historically, significant increasing in productivity were the result of a management core build established. Management is responsible for building the skilled worker. Organizations are made up of individuals, who have a high degree of technical skill and knowledge. Information must be convert into knowledge and manager's communication ability dictates the level of effectiviness in using the skilled worker's knowledge. Organizations represent a network of specialists, rather than a strong command and control heirarchy. However, technology of itself does not increase productivity.

How do managers increase productivity? Managers increase productive by helping the knowledge worker to work smarter - not harder. Management creates the knowledge worker by empower them with specialized skills and knowledge. Productivity gaps are closed through training. Management must decide who gets trained. Training the right people increase the worker's capability, compensation, and productivity. Performance can only be achieved by the worker working smarter not harder. Only ten percent of the work is effectively and producing ninety percent of the productivity and profit. Thus, over ninety percent of the work is ineffective. It is management's responsibility to reduce this inefficiency. Drucker will later introduce his activity oriented decision model to help managers reduce the amount of inefficiency.

Managers are responsible for creating and maintaining their carreer path. Receiving a higher education degree and employment, in a large company does not guarentee retirement, with the company. Managers are responsible for designing and maintaining their career. Fragmentation of purpose and thought must be overcome to reduce confusion and losses. Knowledge workers must learn how to produce. This requires the knowledge work to remain current, with changes, in the business environment. Their contribution in large part depends on the knowledge workers ability to adapt and learn smarter ways to produce.

Activity Oriented Decision model prevents loses and failures. Activity Oriented decisions combine value analysis, risk analysis, quality analysis, and process analysis, into one. Decisions resulting from managers who follow the activity oriented decision model don't risk losing capital. The combination of the various information sources, associated with the activity oriented decision helps the manager understand the potential value of the venture, the potential value, the risks of failure, and the cost of modifying or implement new processes, and the long term affects on quality in the organization.

The activity oriented decision model is a conceptually definition and the practical discipline proposed exciting possiblities. Activies are analyzed, defined, and sequenced. Resources are allocated to the activity. The activity outcomes are measured to determine, if they are meeting requirements. Managers weight the risks by asking "what are the benefits of the activity?","What are the fallout impacts for failure to implement the activity?", and "what are the impacts to the organization long term by implementing the activity?"

Analysis of the process, results in time and budget allocation estimates. Schedules provide time lines and sequences linked to a resources. Managers must coordination various organizations to gain access to a resource. A resource represents a individual in a specialize field of knowledge. Communication and coordination are necessary to effectively manage various resources, so each individual understands, what is expected and what to produce. Budgets and time provide the boundary of the activity problem. Its possible to have a budget or schedule which exceeds the boundary of the problem, making the activity unfeasible. To avoid this problem, the manager must provide clear objectives to be developed and maintained. The objectives scope must stay within a predefined problem boundary.

The Master of Management on the profession of management.......2001-02-07

Peter F. Drucker is known as the "management guru's management guru". The articles in this book explain the reason. Each article is a landmark in the field of management.

In the preface Drucker shows why he has become so famous. He shows his strength of recognising trends and how these trends will affect business, people, and society. This preface is followed by a short introduction from the editor.

The book consists of two Parts, The Manager's Responsibilities and The Executive's World, with each consisting of 6 Harvard Business Review-articles (out of 32 articles and growing). The book also includes an interesting preface, an introduction by Harvard Business Review-editor Nan Stone, and an interview with Peter Drucker.

In Part I - The Manager's Responsibilities, the articles discuss the managerial responsibilities of the manager, although Drucker prefers the term "executive". The articles discuss general management such as the decision-making process, effective management, strategic management, and innovation.

Part II - The Executive's World, Drucker discusses the history of management, the transformation from the traditional command-and-control model to knowledge-based organizations, information technology, and non-profit management.

The book concludes with an interview with Peter Drucker, which is based on his 1995-book 'Post-Capitalist Society'.

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Government Finance Review, published by Government Finance Officers Association on December 1, 2003. The length of the article is 804 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Managing in a knowledge society.(Book Review)
Author: Peter Christensen
Publication: Government Finance Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2003
Publisher: Government Finance Officers Association
Volume: 19 Issue: 6 Page: 60(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management.

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Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management.
Peter F. Drucker
Manufacturer: A Harvard Business Review Book
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NXPB3U

Book Description

On the evening of June 1, 2001, during an intimate gathering of Nepal's royal family, Crown Prince Dipendra opened fire with automatic weapons inside Kathmandu's royal palace, killing his parents -- the king and queen -- his siblings, five other close relatives, and ultimately himself. It was the bloodiest, most complete massacre of any royal family ever recorded and the most horrifying event in the history of the Shah Dynasty, which had ruled Nepal over 10 generations. The Shah Dynasty continues to rule Nepal -- the Crown Prince's uncle now wears the king's plumed crown -- but Dipendra's violent act has put the tiny mountain nation into a precarious position, where ancient customs and traditions contend with steadily encroaching modernity and Maoist insurgents threaten full-blown civil war.

What led privileged young man like Dipendra to an act of such senseless and terrible violence? Drawing on exclusive interviews with the late King Birenda and surviving members of the Shah family, and with unparalleled access to the royal palace, journalist Jonathan Gregson pulls back a veil of secrecy and intrigue to expose a family struggling to bridge the gulf between ancient family traditions and contemporary mores, between the mysteries of a feudal past and the dark pressures of the modern world.

Chronicling both the blood-soaked history of Nepal's royal family and its explosive present, Massacre at the Palace offers a rare and comprehensive examination of the inner workings of a family apparently doomed from its beginning to tragedy and loss. Skillfully merging the epic turbulence of Nepal's past with an intimate knowledge of the current state of the court, Gregson offers a riveting account of the birth of the Kingdom of Nepal, and the role of its semi-divine monarchy, and what this means to ordinary Nepalese people. All of these, Gregson writes, had a direct bearing on what was to happen on that fateful night: a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions played out on a modern stage.

Customer Reviews:

Book is from Gayendra's Perspective.......2007-06-15

The book implicitly seems to think that the son killed their parents over what appears to be a minor disagreement. The only beneficiary was King Gayendra. There is a book on that - Raktakunda.

Not sure who is right but assuming that King Gayendra's version as history is ridiculous.

Doomed is not being too critical.......2002-10-06

Drug use warning: The religious context of this book is Nepal, and the author, Jonathan Gregson, is likely to describe the Hindu temple attendants in Kathmandu as being stoned, a stunning departure from purity in a book about a curse that is described as: "It is also about ritual purity and, strange to say, the symbiotic relationship between cows and kings." (p. 6).

I might have given up on this book, already, but it is difficult to decide. The most modern aspect of our global situation faced in this book is the enormously destructive power of modern weapons, but the psychological potential to find something beyond mere entertainment in the use of such tools of sudden destruction keeps being thwarted by shock. What was really great might already be lost. A lot of intellectual activity seems most meaningful when it still creates the impression that it is going someplace. It might be unsettling to readers and shoppers searching for modern consumer items, contemplating momentary enjoyment of the best that this market has to offer, that the best items available should be evaluated as historical artifacts, more meaningful as a memory in a lifetime that has already registered these deaths as part of the problems encountered in going with the flow. Could anything be worse than now, when shoppers merely contemplate them as objects that might be produced by prospective expenditures? This ought to make at least as much sense as page 16 of the New Republic of October 7, 2002, which quotes Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, telling my U.S. Senator, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, "What's different is three thousand people were killed!" Would this particular consumer item be worth less, if the only people who had ever been killed in Kathmandu's royal palace one day were Nepal's royal family?

There is no index in this book, but it is unlikely that an index would have listed all the entries for cows, anyway. The first chapter is called "Of Cows and Kings," and the religious background for this book includes a curse on Prithvi Narayan Shah, the first king of the Royal family, which has ruled Nepal since 1769. "According to a legend that is as old as the Kingdom of Nepal," (p. 4) Gorakhnath was a Hindu sage, "and he lived only on milk, butter, and curd, the product of Hinduism's sacred cows." (p. 5). The story reminds me of a joke about cows which was fully explained by Calvin Trillin in a column called "Uncivil Liberties" (The Nation, 11/21/1988, p. 518). During the Iowa primary campaign, Trillin tried to suggest how the contest was overly sensitive to agricultural issues, and he later had to eat his words. "I would like to say in the most direct way possible that Michael Dukakis was never under the impression that you have to kill a cow to get the cheese. George Bush never said that the life of dairy farmers is particularly hard because they're often required to milk right through the cocktail hour." In response to his critics, Trillin wrote, "For those of you whose letters indicate that you see nothing at all strange about the proposition that you have to kill a cow to get the cheese, all I can say is that you ought to think about getting out a little more." This history of the doomed royal dynasty of Nepal applies that thinking to just about anyone who can't decide how much they should care about cows. High-caste Hindus in the Himalayas "had chosen to go into exile rather than live under beef-eating Muslims" (MASSACRE AT THE PALACE, p. 7) in India, but the army with which it had originally conquered Nepal included many warrior tribes, including beef-eaters. When there was gunfire in the Royal Palace of Nepal, it was usually "the crown prince practicing on one of the firing ranges, or blasting off at cats, bats, rats, crows, or just about anything else that moved." (p. ix). Stories about deer hunters who shoot a cow are usually about a mistake, or some kind of joke, and this book searches through history as if there must be some other possible explanation.

For the royal family, modern times brought an inability to tell what mattered. "The king had to walk a fine line between his own liberal views and the minimum requirements of a Hindu monarch. He had little time for caste divisions nor, for that matter, the issue of cow slaughter, which is firmly linked with the Gorakhnath cult and is still a live issue today." (p. 113). It was not obvious what path would be best for the future, and the royal family was becoming too interested in personal fulfillment to offer realistic alternatives for Nepal or even for history. This is a serious book. Once you start reading it, you ought to be thinking about why it matters.

Royal Mass Murder.......2002-06-13

Though it failed to generate a huge amount of interest in the U.S., the killing of the entire royal family of Nepal by the country's Crown Prince is an incredible story. Had he not been a Royal, Crown Prince Dipendra would still have to go down as one of the most diabolical mass murderers in history. In all, he managed to kill his entire immediate family and five other close relatives in quick succession before turning his gun on himself.

Author Jonathan Gregson sets the table by recounting the entire history of Nepal's royal family, which stretches back to the mid eighteenth century. To say that the dynasty has had an unhappy history is an understatement, and after awhile the numerous accounts of Royal bloodletting become monotonous. Nevertheless, this history is vital to the story.

Flash forward to June 1, 2001. The Crown Prince is an unhappy man of thirty. An alcoholic and a drug addict, he has been denied permission to marry the woman he loves by his domineering mother and threatened with being removed from the line of succession to the throne. Gregson sets all of this up well and then recounts the bloody events as they happened. The secrective nature of Nepal's royal family and the god-like awe to which the king is still held there seems to have smewhat stunted Gregson's narrative. Still, he does a fine job with what he was able to decipher. Along the way, he paints a vivid portrait of a fiercely proud third world country that is forever wrestling with the conflict between traditionalism and modernism.

Overall, "Massacre at the Palace" is an enlightening book that is full of surprises.

Book Description

This volume presents a clear examination of the philosophy of law within a political, social, and economic framework. Coverage introduces readers to operative legal concepts, everyday law practices, substantive procedures, and the intricacies of the American legal system. Eliminating confusing legalese, the authors skillfully explain the basics—from how a lawsuit is filed to the final appeal—and review English legal roots. The survey addresses history and the law, court organization, procedure and evidence, limitations, constitutional law, criminal law, administrative law, environmental law, torts, contracts, and property law. For those interested in a greater understanding of the American legal system.

Book Description

Rapid Ecological Assessment (REA) is a methodology developed by The Nature Conservancy to provide comprehensive and reliable information about biodiversity resources in situations where time and financial resources are limited. REAs utilize a combination of remote-sensed imagery, reconnaissance overflights, field data collection, and spatial information visualization to generate useful information for conservation planning. Nature in Focus is an in-depth guide to the theory and practice of REAs, offering a detailed approach for assessing biodiversity in a rapid and integrative manner. It provides researchers with the essential tools and techniques they need to conduct an REA, and offers valuable advice about the planning and implementation aspects. The book:

presents an overview of the REA methodology and sampling framework
reviews all aspects of an REA: planning and management, mapping and spatial information, information management
describes surveys of vegetation and fauna
presents a generalized description of threat assessments
explores the manner in which large amounts of data produced by different REA teams are integrated and synthesized into a cohesive set of management recommendations
explains how the REA effort is documented, published, and disseminated
offers a detailed REA case study

Also included is a set of twelve color maps that describe the sequence of mapping activities in the case-study REA, along with other map examples from a range of REAs. In addition to the case study, appendixes offer a full set of REA field forms for sampling, and a model "Scope of Work" that describes the nature of work to be conducted in an REA and outlines the roles and responsibilities of the participating organizations. Nature in Focus presents the collective experience of more than ten years of REA field-testing. Conservation practitioners and biodiversity scientists who are involved with REA initiatives, along with managers, policymakers, and others involved with conservation programs will find the book a useful and nontechnical guide to an essential element of successful conservation.

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