Asian Dawn : Recovery, Reform and Investing in the New Asia

Book Description

In his bestselling Asia Falling and China on the Brink, one of the Library Journal's best Business Books of 1999 Callum Henderson explored the sources, course, and likely outcome of Asia's worst economic crisis since the Second World War. In this new book he provides us with a keen insider's view of Asia's miraculous economic recovery. Noting that the situation could once again take a turn for the worse, he offers his predictions on Asia's economic future providing expert guidance on the best investment opportunities in the new Asia.

Book Description

Exceptional workplace environments don't just happen; they're built on a week by week basis. In FAST52: Building an Exceptional Workplace Environment, Lynda Ford gives a profoundly simple and powerful formula that any supervisor or manager can use to improve their organization.

The FAST52 acronym is geared for today's busy managers. The concept is based on the notion that if you consider just one idea a week and put many of the 52 ideas to use, you'll see improvements, and at the end of one year you'll have laid a solid foundation for an exceptional workplace environment.

FAST52 is an acronym for
Focused
Action-Oriented
Steeped in Simplicity
Timely
52 Weeks a Year

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Workplace Tool.......2003-07-10

Building an Exceptional Workplace Environment is a book every HR person, Supervisor, or anyone who works in a group/team environment should have.

Most any employee/supervisor problem, whether it is in the office or factory, appears in the "Contents" of the book. The chapters are very short and within five minutes you will have a general idea how to tackle and succeed with an adaptable solution.

With 30 years of experience working in Human Resource, I can tell you that this book will not be left on a book shelf, but within arm's reach away.

If you want an exceptional workplace, then read this book.......2002-11-14

Lynda Ford has done an outstanding job of presenting a sharply written, cogent book on how to create a great working environment in your organization. What makes the book so readable is that it gives managers and supervisors a step by step guide on what they can do to create an exceptional work place. Many supervisors and managers feel like they are caught in the middle and that they can't make a difference. Not so, suggests Ms. Ford. They can make a difference, and this book tells them how.

Great job; very readable; and enjoyable. You won't be disappointed.

Book Description

Provides a concise, elementary treatment of the most important aspects of rubberlike elasticity, including new theoretical insights and recent experimental results. Taking the viewpoint of the physical chemist or chemical physicist, the author focuses on equilibrium properties (rather than polymer viscoelasticity, for which there is already a huge body of literature). The first part of the book deals with fundamentals, assuming only the basic concepts of physical chemistry; the second addresses more advanced topics, some of which are still under intensive investigation. The more detailed material for both parts has been placed into appendixes.

Book Description

Exact solutions of differential equations continue to play an important role in the understanding of many phenomena and processes throughout the natural sciences in that they can verify the correctness of or estimate errors in solutions reached by numerical, asymptotic, and approximate analytical methods. The new edition of this bestselling handbook now contains the exact solutions to more than 6200 ordinary differential equations. The authors have made significant enhancements to this edition, including: · An introductory chapter that describes exact, asymptotic, and approximate analytical methods for solving ordinary differential equations · The addition of solutions to more than 1200 nonlinear equations · An improved format that allows for an expanded table of contents that makes locating equations of interest more quickly and easily · Expansion of the supplement on special functions This handbook's focus on equations encountered in applications and on equations that appear simple but prove particularly difficult to integrate make it an indispensable addition to the arsenals of mathematicians, scientists, and engineers alike.

Customer Reviews:

Analytic solutions are still preferable.......2004-01-24

An amazing tome. 6200 ordinary differential equations that are exactly solvable. Typically, when you study ODEs, your text will describe a standard pedagogical set, like systems of DEs with constant coefficients, etc. Look at Boyce and diPrima's "Elementary Differential Equations" as a good example of this.

But just as people have compiled tables of numerical values of useful functions, like Abramowitz and Stegun's "Handbook of Mathematical Functions", did anyone do likewise for ODEs? Well, Polyanin et al have done so.

These days, many who face solving an ODE might resort to doing so numerically, since computers and software packages have become so powerful. But analytic solutions are still always preferable, assuming that they exist and you can find them. The reasons are threefold. Firstly, they are more compact to encode than tables, from a computational viewpoint. Secondly, it is often easier to search for understanding in a known functional form than in a table. Thirdly, if you have a solution in the form of a function, and that function is differentiable or integrable, then you may be able to gain more insight, or apply the answer to broader usage, by doing so.

Thus analytic solutions are desirable. The problem is in finding them. That is where this book has value. It encapsulates a lot of specialised ODE solving techniques, applied to reams of equations.

As an aside, the book also shows a qualitative difference between Russia and the US. The Soviets always lagged behind the US in computing. So by necessity, Soviet scientists emphasised more the traditional pencil and paper approach to solving equations. Whereas Americans were more likely to toss it over to a nearby computer. This has lead in the US to the deprecating of courses and texts in differential equation solving. Hence if you are an American researcher facing an ODE with no obvious solution, it may be quite difficult for you, ab initio, to find a solution. So check this book first for answers.

Book Description

Grandfather Stories chronicles the transition from family farming with a team of horses to the mechanized farm through the eyes of a growing boy. He recalls, “Dogs called Shep or Billy came and went. Cats followed Granddad from the barn with his two pails of milk. Chickens fussed and squawked and produced eggs, which had to be collected every evening. Night hardly cooled from the heat of the day. Rotating fans served as the only air conditioning after electricity came. Heat lightening walked across the slate sky. The kitchen smelled of wood-fire, fresh peach or cherry cobbler, and churned butter. On the back porch where the work boots and the straw hats resided, the slop bucket full of old milk gave off its sourer odor to mix with the odors of kerosene and mud. There were chamber pots under the bed for nighttime use rather than trekking to the outhouse. Long-legged calves with runny behinds bawled for the moms during the day.”

These farmers in Gentry County, Missouri traced their ancestry back to the British Isles. Some fought in the American Revolution before they began pushing westward. These were self-sustaining farms able to produce most of the meat and vegetables and animal feed necessary for their survival. The reader will join Perry in feeding and doctoring pigs, harnessing a team of horses, visiting a blacksmith, and making hay. Come attend a Saturday night band concert and Sunday church followed by a church picnic. Sit on the lap of a former slave. Take the long train ride back home after a summer testing your growth. Sample a life now absent from most of the United States.

Book Description

If Frank McCourt had grown up in Depression-era Arkansas, he might write like Dale Bumpers, one of the most colorful and entertaining politicians in recent American history: Atticus Finch with a sense of humor. In The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town, Bumpers tells the story of his remarkable journey from poverty to political legend, and the result is a great American memoir that is already attracting wide acclaim for its clever Southern charm:

“How agreeable to read a serious politician’s memoir and find it as full of wit, bite, scorn, compassion, and insight as Dale Bumpers himself.” -Norman Mailer

“Former Arkansas governor Bumpers served in the Senate for twenty-four years and is currently with a Washington law firm. However, this witty book indicates he may have a new career as a humorist on the printed page. . . . These charming tales from a country lawyer turned national politician are thoroughly enjoyable.”-Publishers Weekly

“This saga of bootstrapping from an impoverished boyhood to the Arkansas governor’s mansion and a distinguished senatorial career could easily serve as a manual for the legislatively inclined. But it is the author’s total candor, combined with his facility for humor spun out of rural America’s plain talk, that lifts this remembrance well above the ordinary.”- Kirkus Reviews

Dale Bumpers was reared during the depths of the Great Depression, in the miserably poor town of Charleston, Arkansas, population 851. He was twelve years old when he saw and heard Franklin Roosevelt, who was campaigning in the state. Afterward, his father assured young Dale that he, too, could be president.

Many years later, in 1970, after suffering financial disaster and personal tragedy, Bumpers ran for governor of Arkansas, starting out with one-percent name recognition and $50,000, most of which was borrowed from his brother and sister. He defeated arch-segregationist Orval Faubus in the primary and a Rockefeller in the general election. He served four years as governor and then twenty-four years in the U.S. Senate. He never lost an election.

Two weeks after Bumpers left the Senate, President Bill Clinton called him with an urgent plea to make the closing argument in his impeachment trial. That speech became an instant classic of political oratory.

The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town is the work of a master politician blessed with wry insight into character and a gift for rib-tickling tales. It is a classic American story.

Customer Reviews:

A Witty and Heartfelt Memoir.......2006-11-05

Dale Bumpers recounts his formative years with honesty, verve, and a wonderful sense of humor. Sparing us a blow-by-blow account of his years as an influential member of the United States Senate, Bumpers instead gives us the gift of riding along for the journey as he looks back on his life and remembers the lessons he learned from his father in Depression-era Arkansas. We enjoy a remarkable whirlwind tour -- through high school, college and law school; through tragedy; through the years of simultaneously serving as city attorney, family hardware-store operator, lawyer, husband, and father; through the many often-zany legal cases and clients with whom Bumpers worked; and, finally, through the decision of the young, smart, and genuine country lawyer -- inspired by his father, who comes across as a thoughtful, caring, and noble man, to commit to a life of serving others -- to launch a long-shot campaign to become the Governor of Arkansas. This is not a book for Bumpers to tout his influence on policy in Arkansas, although I discovered later that he was the only Arkansas Governor of the twentieth-century who, among Arkansas political scientists, achieved the rank of "Great." (Other Arkansas governors included David Pryor and, of course, a young man named Bill Clinton.) Nor is it a bogged-down account of Bumpers' years in the Senate, although he was for twenty-four years among the most revered members of that body. Nor is it a rumination on the trends of the times or the national character, even though Dale Bumpers was repeatedly encouraged to run for president and declined in 1976, 1984, and finally for the last time in 1988. Indeed, in an age where politicians discuss their political accomplishments and ambitions at length in their memoirs, with a cloying sense of self-centeredness that encourages one to forswear the genre entirely, Bumpers never discusses the intense-but-always-fleeting power struggles that define Washington, or why he always decided against running for the presidency. Instead, the book is a reflection a long, sometimes-bumpy, but always satisfying public and private life, full of vivid images, memorable episodes, and wonderful stories.

What makes the book so appealing is its utter lack of pretense, Bumpers' genuine and unfailing respect for those who might wander across his book in the local library and spend a few moments with it. It is little wonder he always won re-election in Arkansas, despite the fact that his views tended to be more liberal than those of the state as a whole. ("Do you want to know why you always thought I was more liberal than I said I was?" he recounts asking an assembled group back home in Arkansas, as he was finishing up his last term in the U.S. Senate. "Because I was!") In an age of insta-political memoirs, Bumpers mentioned that it took him nearly four years to write the book, and it shows.

Given our disenchantment with politics these days, we are constantly looking for a man on a white horse to save our political culture from itself. One wonders, however, what our potential would be if we moved past the cult of political celebrity, and searched for a leader who was confident but genuine, talented and humble, and most of all, good and decent, with an integrity and a generosity of spirit that reminds us of the best about ourselves. In an age where we are all looking for the next John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton (Mitt Romney? John Edwards? Barack Obama?), you may, after reading this memoir, wonder whether we may better be served by searching for the next Dale Bumpers.

Personal Autograph.......2006-02-24

Senator Bumpers' memoir is truly a great read. The Senator is very candid about politics, honest about his life, and philosophical without trying to justify his actions while in office. In a day where it seems every politician running for office feels the need to write a book, Senator Bumpers has taken the time to write one after leaving public office.
On a personal note, the Senator took time out of his day to autograph a copy for me on the occasion of my retirement from the Army.
This is a very good book.

a cozy memoir with a folksy leader.......2005-05-11

Dale Bumpers might be seen as a mixture of one part Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird), one part Jefferson Smith (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), and a half part Abe Lincoln (at least he got the self-deprecating part).

In his memoir, Bumpers presents his life in wry strokes from Depression-era Arkansas through the Clinton impeachment trial. When focused upon the Arkansas of his youth, Bumpers' writing rings with spry anecdotes and the merriment of a man who can laugh at what was once a scandal and present rural life with a fine eye.

Unfortunately, the broad brush strokes of his gubernatorial and senate career reeks of sterilized gaps (or perhaps, hatchets slyly buried). Bumpers becomes jaded, cynical, and cautious in writing about Washington powerbrokers, condensing his memoirs into a string of dinner parties and public engagements lacking the same confessional quality. After multiple terms in the Senate, Bumpers recalls only two meaningful debates - Panama Canal, and the battle to save the Manassas Battlefield from becoming a shopping center.

Bumpers' memoir is worth reading for the depiction of the rural South and a profile of a real-life career of a grassroots lawyer who did good and made good in the first half. However, concluding with Bumpers speech on behalf of fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton during the impeachment trial is anticlimactic, and the latter section begs for the same treatment as his earlier, less public life.

Great, vivid stories by great public servant.......2004-10-25

Great read by someone who knows how to paint pictures with words. Dale Bumpers is a true public servant, not a politician out for fame, ego, money, and sex. I first became aware of him in a lengthy newspaper article some decades ago that gave deep background coverage to his spoken eloquence and mastery of issues, beyond that even of most Senators. I have wanted him to run for President ever since, and I think his speech in defense of Bill Clinton shows what a loss we have endured in not having Dale Bumpers as a President, particularly in light of the actions of our current President.

The Senator describes in his book how Arkansas was always competing with Mississippi in being at the bottom of the lists of good things, and at the top of lists of bad things, and how he strove to change that. I was born and raised in Louisiana, and remember experiencing the same thing with Mississippi, but don't remember seeing Arkansas on those lists frequently. I consider that to be a testament to the Senator's success in changing things in Arkansas, as he was born about 1926, and I was born in 1963.

Lets hope a generation of Americans finds this work as inspiring as the author found the words of Harry Truman to him: "You should always remember that the people elected you to do what you think is right. They're busy with their own lives, and they're depending on you.... Get the best advice you can find on both sides of the issues, pick out the one that makes the most sense to you, and go with it.... Secondly, trust people with the truth. Politicians always have a hard time telling people the truth, rather than telling them what they think they'd like to hear. People can handle the truth, and you can trust `em with it." (p. 226).

Sheerly a delight!.......2004-08-03

This is an exceptionally excellent book, replete with snatches of humor and wise and poignant thoughts. It is indeed a memoir rather than an autobiography, and does not dwell much on the author's illustrious career as governor and senator. The best chapters are toward the end, when he tells of his crowning achievemnet after he left the Senate and gave his superlative speech in the trial in the Senate of Bill Clinton. I am glad he set that speech out in an appendix since I had forgotten just how able it was. This book is a great book, and one can recomment it unreservedly.

Book Description

Laud Humphreys (1930–1988) was a pioneering and fearless sociologist, an Episcopal priest, and a civil rights, gay, and antiwar activist. In graduate school during the late 1960s, he conducted extensive fieldwork in public restrooms in a St. Louis city park to discover patterns of impersonal sex among men. He published the results in Tearoom Trade. Three decades later the book still triggers many debates about the ethics of his research methods. In 1974, he was the first sociologist to come out as gay. Laud Humphreys: Prophet of Homosexuality and Sociology examines the groundbreaking work through the life of a complex man and the life of the man through his controversial work. It is an invaluable contribution to sociology and a fascinating record of a courageous life.

Customer Reviews:

This is a "must read" for those interested in Qualitative Methodology.......2007-05-22

For anyone that has read Tearoom Trade, this biography helps to answer a lot of questions about Laud Humphreys life and work. Extremely well written, deeply insightful and thoroughly researched.

Laud Humphreys Prophet Of Homosexuality And Sociology

Average customer rating:

Laud Humphreys Prophet Of Homosexuality And Sociology
John F./ Brekhus, Wayne H./ Keys, David Patrick Galliher
Manufacturer: University of Wisconsin Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OS2902

Book Description

For more than thirty years James Houston has been flying to Vancouver, then taking a little plane north and west to the airport at Sandspit on the Queen Charlotte Islands. After the ferry ride to Skidegate, he takes the single road running north on Graham Island and settles down in his small cottage by the bridge over the Tlell River. There he fishes, writes, draws, roams around, and rejoices that he and his wife, Alice, have found the perfect place.

People go misty-eyed when they recall the Queen Charlottes, those distant islands in the Pacific within sight of Alaska that are miraculously temperate and see little snow. The glaciers of the Ice Age passed the islands by, leaving a treasure trove for botanists and biologists. Today, the warming Japan current still protects its shores.

Among its many delights are spectacular wildlife of all kinds. On land are many deer, river otters, and the largest black bears in the world. Its waters shelter giant crabs, salmon, and killer whales. And the air is filled with remarkable birds, especially the ravens and bald eagles that are everywhere. Special landscapes include moss-hung rainforests that remind us that this is Emily Carr country, sheer cliffs that plunge straight into the Pacific, miles of empty beaches piled with sculptured driftwood, Guinness-black forest pools and thundering seascapes, and even a secret Haida mountain that provides the rare carving stone known as argillite.

These are the islands of Haida Gwaii, of course, and James Houston has always had an affinity for native people, whether with Ojibway friends in his Ontario boyhood or with Inuit in the North. His book tells the history of the Haida, the coming of the Eagle and the Raven clans, and the rich culture they developed in this land of plenty. Then came the bloody sea otter fur trade with sometimes ruthless sea captains two centuries ago and later the smallpox that wiped out 80 per cent of the Haida population, with social effects that have lasted to this day. Houston also tells us about totem poles and potlatches, two traditions that he has seen being revived. And while many old Haida legends adorn his book, there are also fine modern characters, including the old Haida visitor who sang a song to her river chez Houston, and the Houstons’ friend Teddy Bellis, who liked to offer their big-city guests a snack of “smoked dog.”

From a visit to the awesome power of the crumbling poles at the deserted village of Ninstints in the south all the way to the site of a crab fishing tragedy on North Beach, the book covers the range of the archipelago. But James Houston is a fanatical fly fisherman and his love of fishing on his doorstep – and dramatic tales of salmon or trout caught or lost by him, or Alice, or their friends – runs through the book. So, too, does their beloved Tlell River, which ebbs and flows with the tide a mere twenty feet from his window. As he and Alice arrive and open up the old green cottage, their excitement will affect everyone whose family has ever had a special summer place, a hideaway. Reading this book is almost as good as being there.

Customer Reviews:

Well written, informative, and entertaining.......2002-06-12

This book is well written and it satisfies one's craving for learning more about the Queen Charlottes. As a salmon fisherman, I felt the chapter titled "Old John" was worth the price of the book.

HIDEAWAY. Life on the Queen Charlotte Islands

Average customer rating:

HIDEAWAY. Life on the Queen Charlotte Islands
James HOUSTON
Manufacturer: McClelland and Stewart
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000J02BCQ

Book Description

LOVE LIFTED ME: In Spite Of The church is an inspirational read of an African American, openly-gay man's triumphant journey through the guilt, shame and condemnation brought on by his Christian upbringing. It chronicles events from his youth and throughout his young adulthood, describing a vivid, moving, and even sometimes comical portrait of how seemingly insurmountable social and spiritual challenges guided him to his own 'Damascus Road.' There, he describes in his book, "within my own, private valley of the shadows of death," is where his deeply rooted faith in the unconditionally loving Creator was forever restored, and his unique human orientation eternally validated by God.

Customer Reviews:

Informative.......2003-01-03

I thought this book was very informative and gave a very detailed account of life as an African American homosexual, growing up in the Chrisitan church. After reading the book you can't help but have some compassion for what homosexuals inside or outside of the church deal with on a daily basis. As far as the Christian community goes, Mr. Easter is right in his assessment of the Christian church not embracing or understanding homosexuals. He is right in his assessment that indeed Jesus did died for all sinners regardless of their sexual orientation and that as Chritians we are commanded to love all of our neighbors not pick and choose. Mr. Easter doesn't do a bad job of arguing some of the scriptures that preachers use to condemn homosexuality. However, he overlooks scriptures like 1 Corninthians 6:18 (which preachers also use) that talk about fornication (sex outside of marriage) being a sin, regardless of whether the people sleeping together are of the same sex or not. Unfortunately for homosexuals, same sex marriage is not legal in every states in this country, and the Bible is very clear about Fellowers of Christ obeying God's Word (Romans 6:11-23).

Yes, the church must get its act together and start exhibiting the Love of Christ and embracing all human beings. The church must also correct all who habitually sin not just homosexuals, because God is not a respector of persons. But Mr. Easter must also admit, that the problem is not one-sided and everyone who claim that Jesus is their Lord and Savior including homosexuals must be willing to be obedient and live by ALL of God's Word. For His Word say "...Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not do the things which I Say?" Luke 6:46

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