Tourism 2020 Vision: Middle East

Book Description

Chicago and New York share similar backgrounds but have had strikingly different fates. Tracing their fortunes from the 1930s to the present day, Ester R. Fuchs examines key policy decisions which have influenced the political structures of these cities and guided them into, or clear of, periods of economic crisis.

Customer Reviews:

Tale of Two Cities.......2007-06-08

If you are interested in the link between institutional design and gigantic practical consequences, then Fuchs' book is for you. The claim is that Chicago escaped the Great Fiscal Crisis suffered by NYC in part because Chicago had a strong political machine (aka Daley) that could say "no" to its public employee unions. In addition, Fuchs has detailed description of how Chicago's reliance on legal devices like special districts rather than special authorities -- the NYC specialty -- may have kept Chicago's budget under control. I teach local government law, and any book that can give me the skinny on how and why law matters is always welcome. This book does very well on that score: You will never be bored by the details of how muni bonds are funded again. Turns out that cities rise and collapse on the basis of such "boring" stuff.

if you like specialized books about city governance, getthis.......2003-04-20

If you like specialized books about city governance, you would probably like Mayors and Money.

New York City in the 1920s and 1930s got reform, but it never got good government. Why?

Chicago has the country's last machine, yet garbage is collected, snow plowed, and taxes lower than in some Sunbelt cities. How?

Mayors and Money is the counterintuitive argument that a political machine is actually less draining on a city treasury than the most common alternative, eg undue influence of public sector unions. In New York a mayor must make very expensive promises to the transit workers, sanitationmen, teachers, hospital workers to get elected, in Chicago a mayor is chosen more by the insiders of the Cook County Democratic organization. Yes, a Chicago mayor must build things with no-bid contracts and provide patronage jobs, but these cost less than the demands of city employees.

If I have a problem with Fuchs' argument it is that she denies that Chicago and New York have different political centers of gravity. New York has this big liberal intelligentsia, plus a large Jewish population. New Yorkers pay higher taxes than Chicagoans in part because there are powerful constituencies in New York that want or tolerate more spending.

Unlike the other review, I found Fuchs' book very readible, though I thought there could have been more anecdotes. For instance, Daley's getting the State of Illinois to assume responsibility for the courts and welfare are awesome feats. No where else in the country to cities win political battles against suburbs. Fuchs implies that Daley got those things because he was a boss, but doesn't go into detail. Also, unions were and are a part of the Chicago machine, so I think Fuchs is exaggerating the differences.

Unreadable.......2001-03-08

I tried to read this book for an urban studies project. It is completely unreadable. It's easily one of the top-10 dullest books I've ever come across.

Mayors and Money : Fiscal Policy in New York and Chicago (American Politics and Political Economy Series)

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Mayors and Money : Fiscal Policy in New York and Chicago (American Politics and Political Economy Series)
Ester R. Fuchs
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OP5EE8

Book Description

A social history of wartime Milwaukee and its workers as they laid the groundwork for a secure postwar future.

Customer Reviews:

Good topic, but not objective coverage.......2003-06-03

Selecting a city that offered unique dynamics for labor/management relations during World War II, Mr. Pifer makes his pro-union, pro-labor bias very clear through the entire book. Well researched and documented, very little is seen from management's viewpoint and the costs incured by business during the war. Each chapter seems to use the same phrases from beginning to end, as if there was a shortage of terminology.

While the topic is well chosen, this is not an unbiased historical account. The potential for a solid piece of historial writing was there, but the mark is missed in an effort to promose a specific viewpoint.

Book Description

Just what makes a cat sexy? In Sexy Cats J.C. Suarès asks: What could possibly make a cat not sexy? Cats have been practicing sex appeal for centuries. From Abyssinians to alley cats, they've got sex appeal in their blood. From the look to the walk, the personality to the grooming rituals--if you tried to create the sexiest animal on the planet, you'd wind up with a cat.

Full of color photographs of the most gorgeous, beguiling cats in the world, Sexy Cats is a celebration of feline appeal. The images, by such renowned photographers and photojournalists as Gilles Peress, Elliot Erwitt, and Philippe Halsman, are accompanied by classic excerpts, delightful anecdotes, and J.C. Suarès's lively drawings. Sexy Cats stars, among others, Socks the domestic shorthair with the run of the Clinton White House, a seductive Tabby named Alfie, an exotic Egyptian Mau, and Pyewacket--the Siamese costarring with Kim Novak in Bell, Book, and Candle, This charming book features longhairs, shorthairs, champions, and other adorable housepets.

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like trivia?

On This Day in Black Music History
Jay Warner
Manufacturer: Hal Leonard
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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On This Day in Music History: Over 2,000 Popular Music Facts Covering Every Day of the Year

This Day in Music: An Everyday Record of 10,000 Musical Facts

All Music Guide to Soul: The Definitive Guide to R&B and Soul

Get Ready: Definitive Performances 1965-1972 [DVD] - The Temptations

ASIN: 0634099264

Book Description

Whether it's rhythm and blues, hip-hop, rap, jazz, soul, blues or gospel, each genre is covered in the pages of On This Day in Black Music History. A book in a calendar format, it covers over 60 years of mind-tickling trivia, history and events with more than 2,000 facts about hundreds of artists, including Aretha, Ella, Whitney, Dionne Warwick, Paula Abdul, Stevie Wonder, Count Basie, Queen Latifah, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, James Brown, Al Green, P. Diddy, Usher, Destiny's Child, Run DMC and many others. Each page also includes the #1 hit on that day from different years by the best of black music's legendary performers. Truly a nostalgic trip thru time that's entertainingly educational, On This Day in Black Music History definitively demonstrates how black music is interwoven into American history.

Customer Reviews:

like trivia?.......2006-03-18

Are you a trivia nut? Or a lover of history? Find out tons of interesting facts from Black Music History and discover its impact on the music of today. You'll probably just want to read through it like a book, but it's set up as a calendar.

Book Description

Time and Commodity Culture is a set of four linked essays on the cultural systems of postmodernity. Rather than taking modernity and postmodernity as real historical epochs, however, it understands them as strategies for organizing time and social order by means of a `nostalgic' division within them. Each essay explores a particular dimension of this organization of time, especially in relation to the anxieties and the possibilities created by the commodification of culture. The central essay, `Gift and Commodity', studies two areas in which the speed of commodification has increased markedly in recent years: that of the person, and that of information. Using a mix of anthropological, legal, economic, and historical materials, it investigates the privatization of the commons in information by way of such things as the development of markets in human DNA, the trade in human organs, and the creation of property rights in `personality'. `What Was Postmodernism?' analyses the structured anxiety about the commodification of culture that is called `postmodern theory'. A further essay explores tourism as a figure of modernity, and a final essay on memory explores the phenomena of `recovered memory' and of Holocaust remembrance as ways of constructing temporally ordered forms of the real.

Time and Commodity Culture: Essays in Cultural Theory and Postmodernity

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Time and Commodity Culture: Essays in Cultural Theory and Postmodernity
John From
Manufacturer: Clarendon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000N2VM0W

Book Description

Television in the Antenna Age is an accessible, engaging, and straightforward overview of the medium 's history and development in the United States. Integrating three major concerns - television as technology, industry, and art - the book introduces the complex, fascinating, and often overlooked story of television and its impact on American life. It ends with a provocative meditation on the effect since the 1980s of competing technologies, the consolidation of media ownership, and the emerging aesthetics of twenty-first-century programming.Written by the two prominent experts on American television, this book includes several illustrative features on leading figures in TV 's development. It is the most compact and authoritative history of the medium to date.

Television in the Antenna Age; a Concise History.

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Television in the Antenna Age; a Concise History.
David And Robert J. Thompson Marc
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000N64XDQ

Average customer rating:

If It Were Possible, I'd Give It 4 - 1/2 Stars!

Pro/MECHANICA Tutorial Wildfire 2.0
Roger Toogood
Manufacturer: Schroff Development Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Industrial & Technical | Chemistry | Science | Subjects | Books
Industrial Technology | Industrial, Manufacturing & Operational Systems | Engineering | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
Information Systems | Software Engineering | Computer Science | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
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Pro/ENGINEER Tutorial Wildfire 2.0 Advanced

Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 2.0 Tutorial & MultiMedia CD

Pro/Mechanica Wildfire 2.0, Part 1: Idealization (Elements and Applications Series) (Elements and Applications Series)

Pro/MECHANICA Motion Wildfire: Mechanism Design & Analysis

Pro/mechanica Wildfire 2.0: Studies & Connections

ASIN: 1585031909

Product Description

This book is written for first-time FEA users (in general) and MECHANICA users (in particular). After a brief introduction to finite element modeling, the tutorial introduces the major concepts behind the use of Pro/MECHANICA to perform Finite Element Analysis of parts. These include: modes of operation, element types, design studies (analysis, sensitivity studies, organization), and the major steps for setting up a model (materials, loads, constraints, analysis type), studying convergence of the solution, and viewing the results. Both 2D and 3D problems are treated. The tutorial uses a click-by-click format to show the command sequence exactly as performed by the user for a wide variety of models and design studies.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to the Tutorials
2. Finite Element Modeling with MECHANICA
3. Solid Models (Part 1)
4. Solid Models (Part 2)
5. Plane Stress and Plane Strain Models
6. Axisymmetric Solids and Shells
7. Shell Models
8. Beams and Frames
9. Miscellaneous Topics

Customer Reviews:

If It Were Possible, I'd Give It 4 - 1/2 Stars!.......2007-02-15

This is a very good introductory text on using Pro-E with the optional Mechanica structural and thermal (conduction) analysis package. The author, Toogood, begins with a light overview of the finite element theory (non-mathematical) and ties in the Mechanica application. He illustrates how to use the various types of analyses available in the FEA package by walking the reader through setting up a problem (pre-processing), activating the mesher and solver, and viewing the results (post-processing). The written procedures in the book are, for the most part, detailed, complete, and accurate. Mechanical, fluidic pressure, and thermal loadings are discussed and utilized. Optimization and modal analysis (determination of natural frequencies of a body) are also demonstrated. Typically, two (2) or three (3) problems are posed, pre-processed, and post-processed in some detail within each chapter. At the end of the chapter are review questions followed by a couple of problems for the reader to work on his own.

In general, this book does an excellent job of teaching the techniques of using the Mechanica application in a number of different problem scenarios. However not being a complete novice to FEA, I am unsure whether someone totally new to the field could get a sufficient understanding of the FEA background theory and limitations from this text alone. In other words, a reader might come away with the skills to setup and run an analysis, but not really understand the reasoning behind the application, the proper selection of pre-processor inputs, and finally the results. To this point, Toogood references the works of Paul Kurowski (among others) for a better understanding of the FEA technique. For those interested, Kurowski now has a book entitled, Finite Element Design for Engineers (ISBN: 0-7680-1140-X), which I found to be a useful companion to this text. If that is not enough, Toogood is available and relatively prompt and generous with assistance (through e-mail) for students with questions.

For those wondering how much modeling skill is required, the answer is not extensive. However, a basic familiarity with Pro-E is needed. Although they are mostly simple models, the reader is required to develop all models used in problems from scratch w/o much assistance from the author (though models can be downloaded from a website, according to the author). Since this book discusses only the integrated mode of operation of Mechanica w/ Pro-E, importing models made with applications other than Pro-E is not addressed and may lead to difficulties, especially for the novice user.

If I were to suggest improvements to this author they would be few, but would include providing answers to questions posed in the worked examples and at the end of chapters. In addition, it would be nice to be able to review his procedures and solutions for the reader problems at the end of the chapter (perhaps at a website). Inexplicably, the author does not include an index in the book either. This makes it tough to quickly review an individual subject or item later on. An advanced chapter or book on Mechanica would be a welcome addition.

The integrated mode of operation allows for rapid switching and similar GUI's between the solid modeler and FEA application. Nevertheless, there are a couple of gotcha's worth mentioning that plagued my work w/ Mechanica. It is relatively easy to create a solid model in Pro-E that cannot be readily or fully utilized by Mechanica. The optimization routine can fall victim to this problem. Without sufficient thought about what and how you will accomplish a task in Mechanica, some time saving techniques used in the sketching mode of Pro-E may not translate well into Mechanica either, making it impossible to select certain entities in the pre-processor. Idealizations used in certain cases won't work with this type of problem.

Finally, the user will want to double check all settings and selections in the pre-processing segment. If there is the slightest error in setting the boundary conditions (loads, constraints, and etc.), the results produced will probably not be correct for the real problem being modeled, i.e. the old "garbage in, garbage out" scenario. Always critically look at the output from the analysis. Does it make physical sense? If possible, compare some significant value from the post-processing to a quick, independent analytical check. It pays to be careful and cautious before accepting the results of any numerical analysis.

Book Description

This user-friendly reference dictionary provides a quick guide to those who have governed Mexico from 1325 to 1997. It covers all rulers from the Aztec Empire to the current president, Ernesto Zedillo. The book provides an objective portrait of the political leadership and describes the circumstances surrounding major events. Arranged chronologically, with a glossary, appendixes, and name index, the book includes four main chapters--The Aztec Empire, The Conquest and Viceroyalty, From Independence to the Diaz Dictatorship, and Revolution and Modern Mexico. Each chapter opens with a brief characterization of the period. A practical guide to Mexico's long and complicated history, this book contains short biographical entries on each of the country's 185 rulers. Entries describe the main accomplishments and failures of each tenure. The book also includes an appendix describing Mexico's main plans, treaties, conspiracies, and constitutions.

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Dictionary of Mexican Rulers, 1325-1997
Juana/ Vazquez Gomez, Jua Vazquez-Gomez
Manufacturer: Greenwood Pub Group 01/1//1997
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N5NY28

Book Description

Reminding us that all media were once new, this book challenges the notion that to study new media is to study exclusively today's new media. Examining a variety of media in their historic contexts, it explores those moments of transition when new media were not yet fully defined and their significance was still in flux. Examples range from familiar devices such as the telephone and phonograph to unfamiliar curiosities such as the physiognotrace and the zograscope. Moving beyond the story of technological innovation, the book considers emergent media as sites of ongoing cultural exchange. It considers how habits and structures of communication can frame a collective sense of public and private and how they inform our apprehensions of the "real." By recovering different (and past) senses of media in transition, New Media, 1740-1915 promises to deepen our historical understanding of all media and thus to sharpen our critical awareness of how they acquire their meaning and power.

Customer Reviews:

Matthew Purdy in THE IOWA REVIEW says --.......2004-05-07

"New Media, 1740-1915 traces a history of the dialogue between media and society that has continued into the present. The title alone is somewhat startling, pairing an emphatically contemporary coinage with a time frame well before the dawn of modern technology as we've come to think of it. But one of the goals of the volume is to establish a context for our own notion of new media and how its newness is constructed. . . . All of the devices in New Media, 1740-1915 were new media in their respective eras, and in a sense they are still new. They are- Gitelman and Pingree use Bruce Sterling's term- 'dead media,' media no longer used and, in many cases, long since forgotten.These devices never got the chance to become fully enmeshed in the fabric of everyday life; the telegraph and phonograph evolved, the rest faded away. As such, they appear to us today perpetually strange, embalmed in their own original novelty. The volume's central lesson, then, is not to become blinded by the promises of our own new media. Because it isn't new at all."

Customer Reviews:

Hard to read.......2006-06-06

Perhaps this book is quite detailed and scientific in nature but not for a casual reading in your spare time. The information is presented in four parts:
+ the first part covers the topics of origins of solar and lunar calendars, origins of the civil calendar, decanal clocks, various water clocks;
+ second part presents the documents
+ third - bibliography
+ and fourth - illustrations
However, I found it very difficult and annoying to have to flip the pages back and forth between the first part to second (documents) or forth (illustrations) whenever author mentions something specific.
Problem - no images in the main text.
It was perhaps designed as a lecture with the hand-outs ....
The quality of the illustrations is also very poor ...

Unless you are required to read this book, I'd look for something else.

Ancient Egyptian Science, vol. 2: Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy. (book reviews): An article from: The Journal of the American Oriental Society

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Ancient Egyptian Science, vol. 2: Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy. (book reviews): An article from: The Journal of the American Oriental Society
Leo Depuydt
Manufacturer: American Oriental Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000988JLK
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Journal of the American Oriental Society, published by American Oriental Society on January 1, 1998. The length of the article is 1245 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: Ancient Egyptian Science, vol. 2: Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy. (book reviews)
Author: Leo Depuydt
Publication: The Journal of the American Oriental Society (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1998
Publisher: American Oriental Society
Volume: v118 Issue: n1 Page: p75(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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