What We Learned in the Rainforest: Business Lessons from Nature

Amazon.com

Studying the environment to gain insight into organizational behavior can be a fascinating exercise, with advocates from Jane Jacobs to Margaret Wheatley among those who have helped us envision the inherent possibilities. What We Learned in the Rainforest takes a similar but uniquely focused approach, as Mitsubishi Electric CEO Tachi Kiuchi and environmental advocate Bill Shireman tie development and sustainment of the rainforest directly to progressive practices of businesses such as Hewlett-Packard, Coca-Cola, and Nike. Employing an interesting format--each section begins with the authors describing an ongoing parachute descent into the rainforest in order to illustrate a specific principle--Kiuchi and Shireman explain how concepts such as feedback, profit, design, and diversity aid both their natural laboratory and their corporate examples. In the "Succession" chapter, for instance, they relate a rainforest's "four phases of life" to the cycle of innovation, growth, improvement, and creative destruction that is experienced by successful businesses. With the goal of drawing on nature's wisdom rather than drawing down its physical resources, the book advances a vision of sustainability en route to profitability that is as provocative as it is potentially practical. --Howard Rothman

Book Description

What We Learned in the Rainforest presents a surprising new business principle: by applying strategies and practices gleaned from nature -- by emulating what it once sought to conquer -- big business can attain greater and more sustainable profits.

With clear, direct language and dozens of real-world examples, the authors show how a company can become, like nature, a complex living system that doesn't merely balance competing interests but truly integrates them. Examples from leading companies include Coca-Cola's use of diversity to drive sales; 3M's technique of managing for innovation; Coors's "all waste is lost profit" theory; and Shell's "industrial ecosystem" approach.

Customer Reviews:

Rainforest? These Guys Leave No Rainforest Behind!.......2004-02-07

Well, as soon as our species can survive on information rather than calories, this book MIGHT be of some use.

In the meantime, I find it a questionable, if not pathetic, apologia for megalomaniacal outfits like Coca Cola. Coke is a leader among the pack of those who apparently share a neverending pseudo-quest to combine illusory humanitarianism ("Coca-Cola does a great service because it encourages people to take in more and more liquids") with an unquenchable thirst for global market dominance ("until, eventually, the number one beverage on Earth will be soft-drinks-our soft drinks").

Can we contemplate the notion that 'unlimited growth' and 'sustainability' just might be mutually exclusive? Look up Ecological Economics, my friends. I beg you.

Waste Neither Money Nor Time..........2002-08-08

This title of this book is an alluring theme but the book is, upon reading, virtually worthless. The analogy between a natural ecosystem and an economic system is clear enough and certainly not an earthshaking discovery - the rhythms, cycles, feedback mechanisms, etc., of any dynamic system are obvious similarities. But try to draw too much parallel between a natural system and a man-made system will inevitably lead to meaningless conclusions.

The author proposes a theory and then cites real-world examples that conform to that theory, sometimes rather forcibly. One example: In a section on information, the author said that the Indian auto industry was protected by high tariffs and that it led to its stagnation and decline. The author claimed that it was because the industry "failed to encourage the use of information." Anyone with the slightest knowledge of free market knows that lack of competition was the real cause. Does the rainforest add anything?

At another point, the author pondered on how the eye was (or was not) the result of evolution, and after postulating that incremental evolution was not possible for certain very complex biological structures (such as the eye), he cites the new notions of "intelligent design" and "downward causation". High sounding names, but how do they come about now?? Well, intelligent design must be because evolution is not...As to downward causation, it is, as illustrated by the rainforest, a series of adaptation. Wow, I thought that was evolution.

There was also a lengthy tirade denouncing the Wintel platform's dominance "threatening the infospace." This was taken right out of the annals of the cyberspace sour grapes.

Finally, although the author tries to appear apolitical and centrist, his liberal bias was all too clear - from his dismissive comments about Dick Cheney to his proposal of (government?) setting rules on how software must be created to be modular, with open interface, etc., etc. Whew!

This book was recommended by a number of big name business people, whose businesses got a fair bit of free PR from this book. My recommendation: waste neither money nor time on this book. Do enjoy the rainforest, but learn your business skills by studying the free market instead.

Great primer on sustainable business principles.......2002-03-01

Bill Shireman and Tachi Kiuchi's book is an accessible, well written treatise on the economic and social power of applying natural principles to business. Unlike other books on industrial ecology, which can be heady and boring, Shireman and Kiuchi have broken down the natural cycles of the Rainforest into easily understandable principles and then provide brief case studies illustrating the application of those principles in a business setting. The book is a great primer on corporate sustainability.

Great sustainability primer.......2002-03-01

I learned a lot from the Rainforest.......2002-02-20

The parallels in the authors' experiences with contemporary business issues are very compelling. This book offers a fresh perspective on some difficult issues, and can give managers a new way to think about their company's relationship to our world.

Book Description

Provides a helpful and comprehensive framework upon which to develop an organizational strategy.

Seeing Organizational Patterns: A New Theory and Language of Organizational Design

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Seeing Organizational Patterns: A New Theory and Language of Organizational Design
Robert W. Keidel
Manufacturer: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Organizational Change | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Entrepreneurship | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1881052656

Customer Reviews:

A fastidiously scholarly, and seminally educational resource.......2004-01-13

Knowledgeably written by Robert F. Kahrs (a practicing veterinarian, teacher, and field researcher of livestock diseases and vaccines), Global Livestock Health Policy: Challenges, Opportunities, And Strategies For Effective Action is a solidly presented, fastidiously scholarly, and seminally educational resource which delves into diverse solutions of global animal health problems and food safety issues that directly affect international trade. Informatively written in technical detail meant for advanced students and active practitioners, the individual chapters deftly address everything from international livestock health standards; to advances in the diagnosis and control of a wide variety of livestock ailments; to offering hard looks at the perils and challenges of the future, and so much more. Global Livestock Health Policy is a superbly detailed and confidently recommended treatment a complex scientific and practical matter for American agriculture and contemporary agribusiness issues.

Book Description

"Almost all evolutionary biologists, indeed all biologists, use particular features to study life. Evolutionary biologists use these characteristics or features in a particular way to unravel a tangled evolutionary history, to document the rate of evolutionary change, or as evidence of biodiverisity. "Characters" are the "data" of evolutionary biology and they can be employed differently in research, providing both opportunities and limitations. The Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology is about characters, their use, how different sorts of characters are limited, and the appropriate methods for character analysis. Leading evolutionary biologists from around the world are contributors to this authoritative review of the "character concept." Because characters and the conception of characters are central to all studies of evolution, and because evolution is the central organizing principle of biology, this book will appeal to a wide cross-section of biologists.

Focuses upon "characters"--fundamental data for evolutionary biology
Covers the myriad ways in which characters are defined, described, and distinguished
Reviews the genetic, functional, and developmental architecture of characters
Discusses the mechanisms by which new characters arise in evolution

Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology

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Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology
Gunter Wagner
Manufacturer: Elsevier Science & Technology
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N5E5HG

Book Description

Molecular mechanisms in visual transduction is presently one of the most intensely studied areas in the field of signal transduction research in biological cells. Because the sense of vision plays a primary role in animal biology, and thus has been subject to long evolutionary development, the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying vision have a high degree of sensitivity and versatility. The aims of visual transduction research are first
to determine which molecules participate, and then to understand how they act in concert to produce the exquisite electrical responses of the photoreceptor cells.
Since the 1940s [1] we have known that rod vision begins with the capture of a quantum of energy, a photon, by a visual pigment molecule, rhodopsin. As the function of photon absorption is to convert the visual pigment molecule into a G-protein activating state, the structural details of the visual pigments must be
explained from the perspective of their role in activating their specific G-proteins. Thus, Chapters 1-3 of this Handbook extensively cover the physico-chemical molecular characteristics of the vertebrate rhodopsins. Following photoconversion and G-protein activation, the phototransduction cascade leads to modifications of the population of closed and open ion channels in the photoreceptor plasma membrane, and thereby to the electrical response. The nature of the channels of vertebrate photoreceptors is examined in Chapter 4, and Chapter 5 integrates the present body of knowledge of the activation steps in the cascade into a quantitative framework. Once the phototransduction cascade is activated, it must be subsequently silenced. The various molecular mechanisms participating in inactivation are
treated in Chapters 1-4 and especially Chapter 5. Molecular biology is now an indispensable tool in signal transduction studies. Numerous vertebrate (Chapter 6) and invertebrate (Chapter 7) visual pigments have been characterized and cloned. The genetics and evolutionary aspects of this great subfamily of G-protein activating receptors are intriguing as they present a natural probe for the intimate relationship between structure and function of the visual pigments. Understanding the spectral characteristics from the molecular composition can be expected to

Molecular Mechanisms in Visual Transduction (Handbook of Biological Physics)

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Molecular Mechanisms in Visual Transduction (Handbook of Biological Physics)
D.G. Stavenga
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MUHFU6

Customer Reviews:

A great, motivational read.......2003-05-23

This is a really good book about a basketball player who overcame his great height disadvantage to become an NBA superstar. This book takes you through the basketball career of Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues. All his life he was shorter than everone on the basketball court. Can you imagine how it's like playing in the NBA when you are on average about 1.5 feet shorter than every one else? That's how Muggsy Bogues has played for his whole life.

Yet he persevered and overcame his height. His basketball career was by no means all easy and problem-free, and many people doubted that someone who was 5'3 could play basketball with guys who were 7 foot tall. But in this book Muggsy shows that height doesn't determine whether or not you can play basketball. Heart and skill are what determine how well you play. From his wonderful high school basketball days to his terrible rookie year days in the NBA, the reader sees how Muggsy overcame his height to become a great point guard. His assist and stealing ability proved vital to the success or the Hornets. You have to admire the little fella'.

I mainly talked about the great facts in this book........1999-09-05

i thougt that this was a great book for any fan of muggsy bogues, or basketball itsself. if you are a fan of muggsy and do not already have this book, you should definately but it. it all the facts you need to know and great up-to-date pictures. this is a great atleast 5 star book. The main reason i liked this book so much is because i am a long time fan and it told me things, or facts that i had never known about the great muggsy bogues. all the information is great, and correct. also, the chapters have very catchy titles, and you will never get bored of this book. i would like to give mad props to muggsy, of course, and the author for making such a great book.

It was good, but sometimes boring.......1999-03-25

It had a good story behind it and it explained his life very well but it just kept going on and going on. It made me tired to read that book.

a must read for all ages!!!.......1998-07-12

inspiring story. Entertaining and captivating. Muggsy tells a riveting story of challenges and triumphs! Great for adults and a must read for youths!

In the Land of Giants: My Life in Basketball

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In the Land of Giants: My Life in Basketball
Tyrone Muggsy and David Levine Bogues
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000K6Q1B6

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In the Land of Giants : My Life in Basketball
David, Illustrated by B & W Photographs Levine
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (T)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTU2M8

In the land of giants : my life in basketball / Tyrone ""Muggsy"" Bogues and David Levine

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In the land of giants : my life in basketball / Tyrone ""Muggsy"" Bogues and David Levine
Tyrone (1965-) Bogues
Manufacturer: Boston : Little, Brown, and Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000VZ9JTM

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Two Incomplete Books in One

Gone With The Card Catalog

Neat book, if you're interested in books and bookmen.

An intresting journey into the history of book publishing

The customer (reader) will decide ! ! !

Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future
Jason Epstein
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Reference & Collections | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
General | Publishing & Books | Reference | Subjects | Books
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General | Library & Information Science | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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The Book Publishing Industry, Second Edition

The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read

Bookmaking: Editing, Design, Production, Third Edition

Publishing for Profit: Successful Bottom-Line Management for Book Publishers

This Business of Books: A Complete Overview of the Industry from Concept Through Sales

ASIN: 0393322343

Amazon.com

As editor-publisher to some of the 20th-century's greatest writers (Edmund Wilson, Vladimir Nabokov, Jane Jacobs) as well as the virtual inventor of the trade paperback (meaning the "quality" type, as opposed to the drugstore mass-market), Jason Epstein is one of those rare publishing-world types who is as invested in the editorial creation of a good book as in its marketing and sales. It is that dual perspective that has guided his half-century-long publishing career and that makes this compact yet expansive professional memoir such a lively, illuminating read for anyone curious how current trade publishing--basically popular general-interest fiction and nonfiction--became obsessed with a narrow pool of quickie bestsellers to the neglect of the far greater mass of slow-burners (known in the biz as "midlist") or of the perennial sellers from years past ("backlist"). But, Epstein follows up with great enthusiasm, the time is not long before the book biz will morph into a new cyberversion of the quirky, intimate "cottage industry" that it was in its precorporate era.

It was in that era that Epstein came of age as a publisher, first at Doubleday in the 1950s, where he founded the successful Anchor Books, the first line of high-quality paperback reissues of classics. The four succeeding decades he spent at Random House, which in that time grew from a family-type shop into one of the largest and most profitable trade publishing houses in the U.S. (currently owned by the German media titan Bertelsmann). Epstein's chronicle of New York publishing jumps around nimbly in time--at one point, all the way back to the 19th century--but it is in recounting the heady, culturally efflorescent postwar years that he waxes most tender, regaling us with vignettes of Ralph Ellison, Mary McCarthy, John O'Hara, Frank O'Hara, W.H. Auden, Chester Kallman, and John Ashbery. Throughout, his entrepreneurial spirit in the service of good books is evident--first in the founding (along with, among others, his wife Barbara) of the still-extant New York Review of Books, then in the thorny 30-year process of publishing the classics imprint Library of America, and in the launching of The Reader's Catalog, a mail-order service from which customers could choose from what nearly every book on the planet in print--and which deservedly has been called the hard-copy precursor to the very site you're browsing right now.

Like The Business of Books, the recent memoir from former Pantheon Books head Andre Schiffrin (Epstein's longtime colleague within Random House), Epstein's book decries the extent to which superstores like Barnes & Noble have forced the high-stakes (and seldom fruitful) corporatization of book publishing. But Epstein prefers to look past the current situation to an imminent day when writers will sell directly to readers over the Internet, a format that will still demand the services of editors, publicists, and marketers but will cut out the costly middlemen of publishing companies, distributors, and superstores (though not small booksellers, he assures us, which nurture bonds among booklovers that even the Web can't sever). Yes, there's money to be made in trade books, Epstein asserts, but not necessarily overnight. And in this brisk, affable, and forward-looking volume, Epstein's own broad-ranging experience in the book biz seems to bear out his recurring theme: do it for love, not money, and the money (if not necessarily the millions) will eventually follow. --Timothy Murphy

Book Description

Jason Epstein has led arguably the most creative career in book publishing during the past half-century. He founded Anchor Books and launched the quality paperback revolution, cofounded the New York Review of Books, and created of the Library of America, the prestigious publisher of American classics, and The Reader's Catalog, the precursor of online bookselling. In this short book he discusses the severe crisis facing the book business today—a crisis that affects writers and readers as well as publishers—and looks ahead to the radically transformed industry that will revolutionize the idea of the book as profoundly as the introduction of movable type did five centuries ago.

Customer Reviews:

Two Incomplete Books in One.......2005-03-07

Jason Epstein has had an extraordinary career in literary publishing, and if he ever writes a full-blown memoir of that career, it would make interesting reading. Epstein has also watched the publishing industry change radically since he entered it in 1950, and thought deeply about it. A book-length discussion of those changes would also make interesting reading.

_Book Business_ reads like condensed versions of both those books, inexpertly woven together. It jumps frequently and (it seems to me) awkwardly from big-picture analysis to "there I was having drinks with Nabokov" anecdotes. Ultimately, neither half of the story is entirely satisfying.

The business analysis is interesting as far as it goes, but too narrow. Epstein dismisses all of popular fiction in a sentence as "formulaic melodrama," and (aside from literary criticism) barely mentions serious non-fiction at all. He seems to make no distinction between "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" and Harlequin Romances, or between David McCullough's "John Adams" and the latest diet book. His ideas about the future role of the internet in publishing are equally narrow. He spends pages explaining (in 2001!) why Amazon.com can't possibly succeed. His enthusiasm for print-on-demand "book vending machines" is infectious . . . but takes little account of the staggering mechanical (not electronic) challenges they would present.

The literary-memoir side of the book also feels curiously shallow. The anecdotes about Nabokov, Edmund Wilson, and the like are fascinating, but the sum of them feels like an after-dinner speech on "Great Authors I Have Known" rather than a discussion of what it's like to edit great writers. The stories from Epstein's career are also great reading, but they are so obviously *just* the high points that they give little sense of the texture of his career as a whole. Did he *never*, in fifty years in the business, suffer a setback?

There's much here that's interesting, and Epstein is a graceful writer, but I think in the end I'd have rather read the two separate, longer books he might have written.

Gone With The Card Catalog.......2004-02-22

The preface of BOOK BUSINESS mentions the very origins of written language: cutting or "scoring" a mark onto a board. He notes that "scorekeepers still keep score on boards". He might also have added that the early scoring was the first expression of binary code, the language understood by the tiny chips that run the giant scoreboards at the Super Bowl, as well as every other scoreboard or "computer" on Earth.

Epstein gives here a curious insider/outsider account of the book business over the last half century. He was decidedly inside when he began in the fifties, working with Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer to "publish" such legends as Nabokov and Faulkner. His anecdote of Nabokov is a gem. He runs into the author in the bar of the Paris Ritz in the early seventies. Nabokov, in a loud Hawaiian shirt and a loud Midwestern accent, raises a toast to Richard Nixon. Why Nixon? Because he believed Nixon would eventually triumph over the Viet Cong and that would lead, dominolike, to the fall of the Soviet Union, enabling him to return to his beloved homeland.

By the eighties Epstein and his ilk are being overwhelmed by mass market forces. Chain bookstores seem to be taking over the industry and reducing drastically the numbers of titles available for sale (and by extension able to be published). The pressure of real estate costs at the malls steadily reduced the selection at bookstores to a handful of bestsellers, "whose faithful readers are addicted to their formulaic melodramas". Publishers who in Epstein's early years were like intellectual families had by the eighties been reduced to mere distributors and advertisers. Between 1986 and 1996, he relates, "63 of the 100 bestselling titles were written by a mere 6 writers".

By way of hinting at what was to come, Epstein tells of meeting a man who in the 1950s described to Epstein in some detail...the Internet. Epstein liked and respected the man, Norbert Wiener, an engineering prof at MIT, but "dismissed this prophecy as science fiction". Courageously, Epstein admits his failure to take the prophecy seriously reflected "the limitations of my own worldview at the time and that of my intellectual friends who were increasingly absorbed in Cold War issues and felt that the fate of Western civilization depended upon the positions they took in their articles for Partisan Review or in their dinner party conversation". One sees the limitations of his worldview pop up again when he meets a man named Bezos, who is committed to changing the book business. After a fairly short time, Epstein pronounces Bezos to be "committed to an incorrect business model".

But in spite of revealing himself to be a bit of a mossback, Epstein also gives what I found to be one of the most exhilerating glimpses anywhere of what technology can do for the book business: A kiosk, containing an "ATM machine for books". In it, an integrated set of computer, internet connection, laser printer, and binder. You put your money in, type onto a keyboard what text you want--anything from a transcript of the Nixon tapes to a copy of LOLITA to a handbook of Siberian butterflies--and the computer downloads it, the laser prints it, and the binder binds it. It doesn't matter if it's "out of print". That phrase is obsolescent. It doesn't matter if the book is banned. The newly printed and bound book will fall into a slot like a can of Coke. Your wait will be perhaps 5 minutes in 2005, falling to 5 seconds in 2010.

Neat book, if you're interested in books and bookmen........2004-01-28

____________________________________________
Just a quick note recommending this short book. Epstein, who spent most of his career at Random House, remarks on how publishing has changed over the years, with plenty of juicy anecdotes. Forex, the Dickens:

As you may know, the US was a book-pirate haven in the 19th century, and Harper Bros. grew to be the nation's largest publisher by pirating Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontes, Macauley -- really, the entire roster of bestselling British authors. Macauley's (pirated) History of England sold a remarkable 400,000 copies here.

Charles Dickens, who kept a close eye on revenues, made a trip to the US in the 1840's, to protest the theft of his work. His plea was ignored, and he didn't much like the country, either. He wrote a short, glum account of his visit, _American Notes_, which Harpers promptly pirated.
Dickens recounts a train trip from Washington to Philadelphia through what he thought was a storm of feathers, but which proved to be spittle from passengers in the forward coaches. He also reported that US Senators spit so wide of the cuspidors that the carpets were "like swamps".

WH Auden, Epstein reports, had the disconcerting habit of showing up an hour or so early for parties and dinner invitations, so he could be home in bed by 9 PM.

Epstein was the first to publish a line of quality paperbacks (Doubleday Anchor) in 1952, and was a founder of the NY Review of Books. From his memoir, I'd say he had an interesting and fun career in publishing .

Happy reading!
Pete Tillman

An intresting journey into the history of book publishing.......2003-11-18

The world of book publishing and all of its adjunct business like book superstores, are an interesting yet hidden mystery. (Or at least I feel that way)

The author takes through the journey of publishing and his life, which are tightly intertwined. He starts with the early and maybe exciting years of publishing in the 50's -60's to the movement of paperbacks to quality and outside the drug store.

Along the way he also shares with us his prospective on the current book publishing/selling/writing situation around us. While I don't want to say much about this part, he doesn't paint a good picture of the overall situation.

But then after describing the current situation he takes to his idea, vision, and hope for the future of publishing were authors would sell directly to readers.

This is a fun and educational book to read for any book lover. I high recommend it to everyone.

The customer (reader) will decide ! ! !.......2003-10-09

A very enjoyable,well written read. As with most things the reader will be the one who makes the decision on how the book business will go,not the authors, publishers or the booksellers.This has happened in most fields and the industry stalwarts have,with the best of intentions,tried to control the changes,or at least tried to keep up in their own way.However; the "tried,true and knowledgeable" have usually been swept aside by forces "outside" the industry.This has happened with all forms of marketing as evidenced by "box stores" ,restaurant chains,the cars we drive,the clothes we drive,the music we listen to,etc. The book industry is like any other where the "establishment knows what's best"and acts like the person whose preference for lunch is cavier,blue cheese and a glass of wine;opens a restaurant and offers it to his clients,gets very little business,seethes,looks on his potential customers as lowbrows when they disagree with his choice;and goes broke.In the meantime another decides to cater to his customers and offers soup,sandwich and "free" coffee and prospers.The diner decides! Like it or not it was the voters who put Schwarzenegger in power in California yesterday;not the political establishment, regardless of stripe.
Socialistic type control by the establishment with grants,in-house editions,best seller lists,establishment, as opposed to reader,awards,etc.remind me of the days when the franchise owners tried to use black-outs to force fans to their games.The fans will decide if they want to go to the stadium,what team they want to watch and how much they want to pay; the same with readers.Epstein seems like a good person and wants to do the right thing;he is part of the establishment and this is not going to be where the changes will originate;they will come from outside.Remember it was not from the large communication companies like A T & T that gave us the internet.
The restricted world of academics,authors,reviews and books he mentions is fine for the establishment but how come he doesn't seem to recognize Steinbeck,Hemmingway,McMurtry,Twain,Spillae,Westerns,Mitchener,Doonesbury,Romances,Sci-Fi,Mysteries,Biographies etc.or such novels as Uncle Tom's Cabin or Gone With the Wind? Are these not books in the mind of the writer? Is it only names like Proust,Camus,Cerf,Dupee,Nabakov etc.that are worthy of thinking as books? How many have read Gone With the Wind versus To the Finland Station ?
As to the local,knowledgeable Booksellers...one day I was in an old established,prestige,well known bookstore in Toronto by the name of Britnell's looking to see what they had in books on mathematical puzzles and recreations.I asked if they had a section on Games and Puzzles. I was smugly told to try a "toy store".Like TARA, they are now Gone With the Wind; and by the way the large chain stores always have such a section.
I have a personal library of about 6,000 titles,read between 120 and 150 books a year and have read very few of the the books reviews or authors mentioned in the book. Is it the attitude that if I dont read what the establishment thinks is important or good then I don't matter? If they believe this,they do so at their peril;the reader will decide.

Book Business: Publishing-Past, Present Future

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Book Business: Publishing-Past, Present Future
Jason Epstein
Manufacturer: W.W. NORTON
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OKMFT0

Amazon.com

What if work by 21 prominent contemporary artists could be described in terms of familiar topics rather than specialized mumbo-jumbo? That was the idea behind Art: 21: Art in the Twenty-First Century. Each of the four essayists takes one topic--place, spirituality, identity, or consumption--as the launching point for discussions of a varied group of American artists. Produced to accompany a PBS television series, this amply illustrated book embraces art ranging from the sexually charged sculptures of Louise Bourgeois (born in 1911) to paintings by Michael Ray Charles (born in 1967) that rework black stereotypes into ironic commentaries. The artists are certainly worthy, and it's no big deal that the art is nearly all from the 20th century (not, as the title suggests, the 21st). But the thematic approach works better for some artists than for others, and the effort to be inclusive makes for vague and awkward writing. --Cathy Curtis

Book Description

Critical acclaim for the first season of the award-winning public television series: "When the artists do the talking, something fascinating happens."-New York Times

"Candidly captured in their raw elements, the artists welcome us, one-on-one, into their complicated, intimate lives."-Artbyte

Published to accompany the second season in PBS's acclaimed television series, this richly illustrated book offers a unique glimpse into the life stories, sources of inspiration, and creative processes of some of the most interesting artists now working in America. The 16 artists, interviewed here by Susan Sollins, executive producer of the TV series, are shown in their homes and studios talking about their work, which is grouped under four general themes-Stories, Loss and Desire, Humor, and Time.

Continuing the innovative approach that won the first season's programs an Emmy nomination and the prestigious Golden Hugo Award for "the best in international television," the next four programs-and this companion book-span varied mediums to reveal the full breadth of the visual arts in today's America.

Customer Reviews:

Very informative and helpful.......2007-05-03

I am a practicing artist and really enjoyed listening to other artists share themselves and their art in a very intimate and informative format,

get the DVD too.......2006-03-24

This book was required for my Contemporary Art class. Great pictures....the accompaning DVD goes into more depth about each artist and provides more info about each artist than does the book.

Art at its finest.......2006-03-20

This is an excellent book and an excellent series for anyone who wants to know more about art being creating today. My Art History professor uses this book at the text book for her Contemporary Art class. I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in seeing art history in the making.

the best series on contemporary art ever!.......2005-12-23

I am a faithful follower of this series, and use the dvds in my contemporary art history class. The companion books make wonderful text to supplement the television series.

I love this series.......2005-12-15

I have the first two books in the series and hope to spend the rest of my life watching the PBS program and looking and thinking about the artwork presented both on video and in the beautifully crafted texts.

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