The Economics of E-Commerce: A Strategic Guide to Understanding and Designing the Online Marketplace

Book Description

Despite the recent misfortunes of many dotcoms, e-commerce will have major and lasting effects on economic activity. But the rise and fall in the valuations of the first wave of e-commerce companies show that vague promises of distant profits are insufficient. Only business models based on sound economic propositions will survive. This book provides professionals, investors, and MBA students the tools they need to evaluate the wide range of actual and potential e-commerce businesses at the microeconomic level. It demonstrates how these tools can be used to assess a variety of existing applications.

Advances in web-based technology--particularly automation and delegation technologies such as smart agents, shopping bots, and bidding elves--support the further growth of e-commerce. In addition to enabling consumers to conduct automated comparisons and sellers to access visitors' background information in real time, such software programs can make decisions for individuals, negotiate with other programs, and participate in online markets. Much of e-commerce's economic value arises from this kind of automation, which not only reduces operating costs but adds value by generating new market interactions.

This text teaches how to analyze the added value of such applications, considering consumer behavior, pricing strategies, incentives, and other critical factors. It discusses added value in several e-commerce arenas: online shopping, business-to-business e-commerce, application design, online negotiation (one-to-one trading), online auctions (one-to-many trading), and many-to-many electronic exchanges. Combining insights from several years of microeconomic research as well as from game theory and computer science, it stresses the importance of economic engineering in application design as well as the need for business models to take into account the "total game."

As the only serious treatment of the microeconomics of e-commerce, this book should be read by anyone seeking e-commerce solutions or planning to work in the field.

Book Description

Consider the metaphor of a theater. One play is in performance, even as the company prepares for a new play simultaneously. Leaders who can focus, like the director of a play, on tangible, concrete features of their organizations, can make change happenon target, on time, on budget. Solutions to problems emerge from practical actions taken to revise and communicate the vision, and modify plant, equipment, tools, processes, worker agreements, and products or services. Developing detailed daily or weekly action plans puts effective changes into motion, as change expertise becomes as second nature as running the business.

Customer Reviews:

An easy to apply guidebook for change.......2001-08-15

We needed a practical guide and some down-to-earth ways to talk among our management team to get through some significant changes. The theater metaphors made talking about specific situations much easier for everyone to understand. There is great substance behind this book, but it is one of the few that everyone in our organization has been able to make sense of.

A Great Practical Change Management Book.......2001-06-15

In this excellent "how-to" book on Change Management, Dutch Holland presents one of the most practical, down to earth and useful books on Change Management that I have seen. He correctly assumes up-front that we are all adults, and can make choices, and can handle a whole lot more change in the workplace than some would give us credit for. He avoids the pseudo-psychiatry and touchy-feely stuff that all too often is included in books on managing change in the workplace. He approaches a desired change as an engineering development project, and leads the reader step by step through the process - much like any development project. It is hard work, but it ain't brain surgery. And one of the best features of the book is the use of a theatre company as a metaphor for change in the workplace (or at home come to that). The idea is that a theatre company epitomizes the ultimate mastery of change in that they willingly and routinely change completely - they change the play. The parallels with what a change at work entails are excellently presented and very insightful. The metaphor works very well and is a worth the price of the book by itself. He concludes with some worthwhile thoughts about how you manage the current business while at the same time managing the change. I thoroughly recommend this practical guide to anyone who is interested in taking charge of the process of change in their office/factory - or in their life.

Not Theory - Reality of Change.......2000-04-28

Dutch Holland is a unique kind of consultant in that his relationships to client companies is measured in years and even decades, as opposed to months. So what he shares here is based on the reality of what it has taken to make all kinds of organizations go through successful change - on-time, on-budget, and meet-the-goals. Since he's a great teacher and leader, Dutch has been able to find the right metaphor to make all the change essentials clear as day to everyone involved. If you buy only one book to help you understand the change process, to get a clear picture of a leader's role in that process, and to erase any and all efforts at self-delusion, this is the book for you and every manager in your organization.

Installing Change While Getting Work Out the Door.......2000-03-29

This is a excellent book for those of us who have a need for change yet have little "breathing room" to make it happen. Its reading is clear, concise and lines out the essential steps necessary to get the most out of your change effort. This change model is applicable to any industry and any size effort. I'll certainly use it in my work.

Average customer rating:

Struthio camelus - the sparrow camel

Not a history of the ostrich

Divided across continents

Desert Dreams

A Review of Dreambirds

Dreambirds: The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food and Fortune
Rob Nixon
Manufacturer: Picador USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312270127

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Ostriches are curious birds, comfortably fitting into no single biological category--for which reason Carl von Linné, the taxonomist, called it Struthio camelus, the "sparrow-camel." An Arab folktale confirms Linné's choice, relating that when it was asked to choose just which camp it belonged to, the ostrich could not decide whether to be a bird or a mammal, for which God condemned it to live alone in one of the harshest deserts on earth, the Karoo of South Africa.

The Karoo, it happens, is Rob Nixon's native ground, and although he has spent much of his adult life in the United States teaching literature, the desert landscape haunts his dreams. (So, too, do ostriches, about which Nixon commands a phenomenal amount of information.) The fantasy of Nixon's subtitle speaks not only to some of his late-night thoughts about the land of his birth, but also to the would-be empires of the Karoo's early European settlers, who sought their fortunes in gold and diamonds--and then, when that did not work, in ostrich feathers, a highly sought fashion commodity as subject to cycles of boom and bust as any other trade good. Nixon charts the fortunes of the Karoo's 19th-century "ostrich elite," updating their story with an appropriately curious recent development: the introduction of industrial ostrich ranching to the American Southwest, where a new generation of dreamers is hoping to make their fortunes in eggs, leather, meat, and other products.

Literate, learned, and endlessly entertaining, Dreambirds is mandatory reading for ostrich fanciers everywhere. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

The ostrich is one of natures misfits: a gigantic bird that can neither fly nor sing. But the fin-de-sicle fetish for feathers made ostrich plumes more precious than gold. Rob Nixon grew up near the South African desert where ostriches first boomed, and had an early passion for the outsize bird. Later, his rejection of apartheid led him to immigrate to the United States, where he encountered a new wave of ostrich mania: American ranchers were trying to convert the gawky bird into a low-cal cuisine. Part memoir, part travelogue, Dreambirds is a natural history of a fantasy and a beautifully crafted, candid revelation of a man's soul.AUTHORBIO: Rob Nixon is the Rachel Carson Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review, the Village Voice, and Outside magazine. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, as well as a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Originally from South Africa, he now lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Customer Reviews:

Struthio camelus - the sparrow camel.......2001-05-14

You don't need to know much more than the biological name of the common ostrich to know that this is a weird bird. Sparrow camel!, what is that? Obviously the ornithologists who discovered the bird were confused about it; as confused, perhaps as the ostrich sometimes looks with it's blank, non-blinking stare. Have you ever seen one up close? The term 'bird brain' is appropriate.

This is all rather unkind, and in fact, unfair to the ostrich. A bird rumored to be so dumb that it supposedly sticks it's head into the sand when threatened; actually we are the dummies if we believe this bit of folklore - it's a myth. The ostrich is in fact remarkably well adapted to it's environment - the savannas of Eastern and Southern Africa, and has had a close association with man for the better part of a century, providing us with food and making fortunes for us.

It is this relationship between man and ostrich that Mr Nixon explores in DREAMBIRDS, specifically his remembrances of the bird from his childhood in South Africa. A town called Oudtshoorn, near where he grew up, was, before WWI, the capital of the worldwide ostrich feather industry. In its heyday it supplied 100,000 tons of plumes to the fashion centers of Europe. The town was then known as the Jerusalem of Africa - a consequence of the large resident community of jewish feather merchants.

That's about all the history there is though. The book is a more a biography, and the ostrich is the common theme, the link between Nixons early youth in South Africa and his adult life in his adopted home - the US. We run into the bird at the ostrich races in Chandler, Arizona and again at various ranches throughout the Southwest. It's not only places, but people that are mentioned. There are some interesting characters involved in the ostrich business. One of the central people in the book is Mr Nixons father, and we are treated to a bit of reminiscing about the relationship between father and son. DREAMBIRDS is a well written and humorous look at this "gawky, boneheaded creature"; gladly it's light on the father and son dynamic, but sadly it's also light on the development and history of the industry. For lovers of birds and biographies.

Not a history of the ostrich.......2001-05-03

Though well written, this is NOT a history of the ostrich, but rather an autobiography of a man who grew up within view of the ostrich industry in his native South Africa, and then was able to run across them and write about them later in life.

There is really nothing new in this book with regards to the history of the ostrich, and the author indeed had nothing to do with the industry at all - at any point in his life.

If you are buying this book for insights into the history of this magnificent bird in food, fashion and fortune, then you will be disappointed to be sure.

Nice story of Nixon's life, well written, and only occasionally pedantic; however a history of the ostrich this is not.

Divided across continents.......2000-11-13

This brilliant attempt to unite the disparate elements of a life should be read by anyone whose adult and childhood selves are split across continents as well as time.

Desert Dreams.......2000-04-10

Rob Nixon's Dreambirds is the journey reminiscent of perhaps our finest writers today--of Naipaul, Rushdie, W.B Sebald and others--, exiles who float between past and present, continent to continent, yet writing as if they have never truly left the childhood landscapes lost to them in the political, cultural and economic upheavals of the modern world. Written in a meditative and at times even dreamlike prose, Nixon introduces us to his family, like him, keen observers of the natural world of South Africa, which becomes for them a means to identify with a land and culture far removed from their Northern European roots. Nixon's memoir is held together by the story of the ostrich, the dreambird, which attracted flocks of pioneers to South Africa's Karoo desert region hoping to make their fortunes on the feathers of this mysterious remnant from prehistoric times. As Nixon tells the story of South Africa's pioneers who banked their dreams on the plumes of the ostrich, we not only learn of the fascinating natural history of the ostrich, but of Nixon's own affection for a world he could never quite feel at home in but savors nevertheless. The politics of South Africa are of course never too far away from Nixon's meditations on how his family and his life were shaped by the ostrich boon. In his restrained prose, one feels the ever present weight of South Africa's troubled double world of black and white, a world Nixon knows he can never escape. This consciousness of the racial divide of his people seeps into nearly every encounter and story, and it's Nixon's gift that he never has to directly speak about what it must feel like to carry the weight of remorse of South Africa's colonial past. He doesn't have to because it is obvious in the choices he makes to weave into his narrative the stories of ostrich ranchers and political activists which he goes to great lengths to balance with that of his own poetic self-examination. The narrative takes one more turn when Nixon moves to America, a place more like South Africa than Americans would like to believe according to Nixon. Here he hopes to put behind him the conflicted emotions surrounding his homeland and the memories of the delicate desert landscape of his youth. After living for a few years in New York, a place Nixon describes as ironically forgiving for emigrants like him, he takes a trip to Arizona to do some travel writing and discovers to his surprise the similarities of the Sonoran Desert to that of his Karoo. There too Nixon finds that the pioneer spirit of the American West is alive and well and not all that different from that of what he remembers from back home. And once again, in flies or rather runs the dreambird, the ostrich, but no longer raised for its flamboyant feathers for fashionable women, but to be fattened, fired over the grill and fed to health-conscious Americans. The get-rich schemes of his ancestors have come back in force in Arizona in the form of the ostrich cowboys. And for nothing else one should read this book for Nixon's comic observations of the surreal world of the modern American West. Dreambirds is a memoir that never quite feels like a memoir, as Nixon deftly lets his own story and that South Africa's reflect through his sensitive observations of the human spirit and how it is revealed to us again and again by the land and its innocent inhabitants that continue to survive despite our reckless dreams to live at their expense.

A Review of Dreambirds.......2000-04-06

In "Dreambirds," Rob Nixon begins with a memory of a particular (omnivorous, as it happens) ostrich of his childhood, then explores the surprisingly pervasive role of ostriches in his personal history, in the settlement of his hometown and nearby "feather boomtowns," and finally in the new American West, where ranchers value ostrich hide and meat in place of plumes. His journeys lead him to provocative considerations of settlement and exile, from the nineteenth-century Lithuanian Jews who were lured to Africa as feather prospectors to an American couple who left Illinois to make rattlesnake crafts in the Arizona desert. Most compelling, however, is Nixon's candid look at the migrations in his own family history and his troubled relationship with his homeland. With a flair for anecdote and a mix of humor and compassion, he inhabits his childhood self as vividly as he inhabits the dramatic landscape of the South African desert--and in so doing, transforms both worlds from foreign to familiar. Rob Nixon's book is an inspiration to the memoirist who envisions a place for his or her story in the global currents of history and migration; it is equally an inspiration to the scholar who pursues in print that elusive, fruitful union between the political and the personal, between researched fact and fantasy.

Dreambirds - the Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food and Fortune

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Dreambirds - the Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food and Fortune
Rob. Nixon
Manufacturer: Picador USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTKM00

Dreambirds - The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food, & Fortune

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Dreambirds - The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food, & Fortune
Rob Nixon
Manufacturer: New York: Picador USA, 2000
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NXG81E

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DREAMBIRDS: THE STRANGE HISTORY OF THE OSTRICH IN FASHION, FOOD, AND FORTUNE
Rob Nixon
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000J3RSYO

Book Description

Plant Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Second Edition Edited by Peter J. Lea Department of Biological Sciences, Lancaster University, UK and Richard C. Leegood Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, UK As research in plant metabolism and molecular biology continues to make great progress it has become essential for plant scientists to have an overview of both disciplines, which are becoming increasingly complementary in understanding plant function. Drawing on their own teaching and research experience, the editors and contributors have provided a timely, comprehensive and generously illustrated new edition of this successful introductory textbook. All of the chapters have been updated and revised, and a new chapter on secondary metabolism has been included. Plant Biochemistry and Molecular Biology will be invaluable to undergraduate and postgraduate students in the plant sciences and to all those requiring an introduction to current concepts in molecular plant science. Reviews of the First Edition "The aim of the editors to blend plant biochemistry with molecular biology is successfully reached and provided a new, well written text book which is easy to read." Journal of Plant Physiology "The contributing chapters are well written with clear illustrations and I would expect undergraduates, to whom this book is primarily targeted, to enjoy using it." New Phytologist "The evident teaching experience of the authors make this textbook a useful aid to students and researchers." Photosynthetica What the lecturers said about the First Edition: "A very useful text with a good balance of traditional biochemistry and molecular biology. Its usefulness is enhanced by a very clear and visually pleasing layout and the generally high quality and clarity of the writing." "A surprising amount of information in an easily accessible format." "Good coverage and depth. I'm not aware of any other book that deals with this material so well as this one. It addresses a real need in plant science teaching."

Customer Reviews:

Plant Molecular Biology.......2000-03-27

Dear Sir: I am a plant Molecular Biologist and develop transgenic plants. I am looking for a suitable book for my undergraduate, biology majors- on this subject and will be glad to review this book.

Dr. O. Bagasra, MD, PhD

Customer Reviews:

Very useful book.......2007-03-12

Again, the pictures in the book are easy enough to use for my 3 year old. The information contained in the book is useful. We enjoy using this book and look forward to the spring and summer when we can travel further than our backyard.

Animal Tracks of New York & Pennsylvania (Animal Tracks Guides)

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Animal Tracks of New York & Pennsylvania (Animal Tracks Guides)
Tamara Eder
Manufacturer: Lone Pine Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 155105311X

Animal Tracks of the Mid-Atlantic States: District of Columbia, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia

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Animal Tracks of the Mid-Atlantic States: District of Columbia, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia
Chris Stall
Manufacturer: Mountaineers Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0898861977

Animal Tracks of the Great Lakes States: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin

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Animal Tracks of the Great Lakes States: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin
Chris Stall
Manufacturer: Mountaineers Books, The
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000MBRH8K

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I love this book!

Encyclopedia of training

Not for Idiots or Lazy people! Understanding about training!

A must read

You don't read this book, you study it

Science of Sports Training: How to Plan and Control Training for Peak Performance
Thomas Kurz
Manufacturer: Stadion Publishing Company, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Explosive Power and Jumping Ability for All Sports

Stretching Scientifically: A Guide to Flexibility Training (4th Revision ed)

Science and Practice of Strength Training, Second Edition

Train To Win: 11 Principles of Athletic Success

Periodization: Theory and Methodology of Training

ASIN: 0940149109

From the Publisher

The purpose of athletic training is to achieve the highest possible sports result (for a given individual). Training is efficient if this result is achieved with a minimal expenditure of time and energy. In accordance with the above statements, Science of Sports Training tells the reader how to achieve maximal results with minimum of effort.

The book describes optimal sequence of types of efforts (exercises) in a workout, in a weekly cycle of workouts and in longer periods, and explains physiological basis for these arrangements. It covers all effective methods of developing any physical ability, skill or mental ability and it tells how and when to change the training loads, how to make training plans for any period of time (single workout, week, month, year, several years).

You will learn, during a day and during a workout, when the best time is for technical, speed, strength, endurance, or flexibility exercises; when during a week should you do a given type of a workout; when and how much should you work on any ability or skill during an annual training plan.

The examples, illustrating the principles of training and the methods of controlling it, are taken from sports with which most people are familiar (track and field, swimming, boxing, wrestling, gymnastics, and ball games). Furthermore, these examples are presented in such a way as to make it easy to apply the conclusions to any other sport. For example, the indicators of boxer's good or bad form described in this book apply equally to taekwon-do fighters or kick-boxers. The methods of controlling the training process described in this book do not require complicated equipment or technicians to make this information applicable in training.

Customer Reviews:

I love this book!.......2007-08-14

This book is just awesome! It isn't a book you just plop down in a chair and read, but one you absorb a chapter or topic at a time. Re-read it as necesary and then when you think you grasp or remember most of the information move on to another. It is organized so that you can look up specific subjects that you are interested in without reading the whole book through, by the way. There's more information within its pages than you can shake an Olympic bar at and much of it you will be hard up finding anywhere else...much less all of it in one book. Don't think of Science of Sports Training as your guide to weight training or a specific sport. It's a compilation of all the finer things for those that already know their sport well, that can only come from a very experienced coach. You could say it's geared toward those with a mindset of being a "student of sport", not just a practitioner of some recreational fun. Mr. Kurz has alot of knowledge to convey to the West if they just give him a mind ready to absorb what he offers, I personally really appreciate the effort he put forth into giving us this book, as there are few like it at all esp. from Eastern European coaches. If you appreciated "Science and Practice of Strength Training" by Zatsiorsky, you should definiately pick this one up too.

Encyclopedia of training.......2007-02-18

This is a reference book on sports training. Kurtz discusses principles of training for various goals, such as strength, endurance, technical and combination of those. All relevant topics are covered: assessment of trainees, warmup, periodization, training cycles and many other subjects. The book is very comprehensive and is extensively referenced. It is also easy to read.

I understand the frustration of some of the reviewers, because the book does not have the actual recipes for training. However, after reading it recipes are just not needed: one can design training programs according to the goals with the long term view.

Not for Idiots or Lazy people! Understanding about training!.......2004-03-11

From all the negative comments I have read, I had to reply. This is a must have book for anyone who wants to understand about sports training. This book gives you a general guide that can help you in any sport. This book is not a bunch of BULL. It is "RATIONAL SPORTS TRAINING" from Eastern Europe. It gives scientific descriptions to help you understand how each type of training would work. This book is not about specific sports training or how to train in a specific manner. Its about understanding methods of training to reach peak performance with as much minimal effort as possible(also note SCIENCE of Sports Training).
Some believe this book to be trivial or a bunch of bull. Well, I guess these people believe that all the scientific experiments done in this book is a bunch of bull. These experiments are done to show specific results that vary from recent to past. So, some of these experiments still remain valid. Experiments were done by REAL scientist.
Another reason for one to not like this book is if they can't exactly read. Most of the book is not really difficult to understand, unless you have basic reading school. You must think about it to understand it. It does get technical from time to time. This lack of understanding of the text by people who don't understand, as the reviewers Matt and Matt above has said, don't think about what they read. At first, I didn't understand the text of some topics. After thinking and looking back at the book, I have a greater understanding of sports training. One reviewer note taking showers with different temperatures as trivial. Kurz notes that one should shower after a workout as part of rest. One should change temperature, so as to "invigorate" the body. If you want to see the validity of this statement, try it at home sometimes. Workout like weightlifting,etc. and try it. If you are not invigorated then I guess rational sports training is nonsense(changing temperatures, to clarify myself, means showering from warm to cold to warm to cold,etc.).
Though i have commented on a lot of positive aspects, the book does have some negative aspects in my opinion. This book is comprehensive, but some topics could be expanded upon like nutrition. The book maybe sort of complex in that you may lose your way. This means that you might remember a topic, but not quite clearly understand, and it is kind of hard to find it in the book.
Some notes Thomas Kurz as unprofessional. I guess tough love is unprofessional for some people. Read some questions asked to Thomas Kurz. They are pretty stupid. I mean its in the damn book. If I asked a stupid question, then I must be doing something wrong in my training. Being scolded would note the inefficiency of my training. I guess some people can't handle a little bit of a direct answer; My dad is worse than Thomas Kurz!
I have learned a great deal about this book. Without it, I would seriously be hurting myself. There is info that can change the way you train for the sake of safety and possible improvements. If your serious about training this is a must have, but if you are a person who is not serious, then don't waste your time to write a incoherent, unlogical review of this book!

A must read.......2004-03-11

After reading some of the more negative reviews encouraged me to write - A lot of this book has to be read in context, and it isn't a textbook on how to get better at playing a certain sport and it isn't a textbook on the mechanics of the body. These can be found in most local library's many times over.

What it covers is the planning and control of training for peak performance, i.e. it tells you finer points that are often missed, for example how to cope with jet lag isn't going to be a problem if you don't travel, but for major athletes travelling is a part of the course which isn't touched in most books.

To agree with another review - this book does need to be studied, not flicked through and pick out 'facts' or to criticise because of sections being pulled out of context.

Also as an aside, Kurz's manner might be a little abrupt, but I bet he gets a lot of questions (I have asked a few and had them answered in a constructive way). He probably gets a lot of drivel in these questions and probably puts sarcastic answers to make writers think before they ask stupid questions.

You don't read this book, you study it.......2004-03-04

This book contains a wealth of knowlege extracted from scientific research journals and, at times, feels more like a survey article than a traditional book. This results in a very densely packed tome of data on all aspects of training. However, this type of book may not be suitable for all readers. To put it bluntly, you are meant to study this book and not passively read it. And when I say study, I mean be prepared to take notes and scribble down your thoughts. This isn't a book that you're going to lie down with and read in bed. Those familiar with Kurz knows that he does not mollycoddle the lazy and those that don't bother to think things through and this book certainly continues that tradition. You are expected to put in some kind of effort in developing your training method. This is actually quite reasonable: Kurz simply cannot be expected to draft up example workouts for every type of athlete.

The key to appreciating this book is to realize what it is meant to do and what it is not. This book provides a wealth of data that you can use to develop your training regimen. It is not meant as a "by-the-numbers" description of exactly what to do and when. For example, other authors may tell you to do such and such. Kurz will report on exactly how level of performance improvement resulted from doing that in a controlled study and cite the appropriate research article. It is up to you to determine whether this level of performance is sufficient to justify incorporating the specific training methodology in question within your regimen. Kurz' intention seems to be to provide the reader with the necessary data to make informed decisions regarding training. What you do with that information is up to you.

This is a no-nonsense book. Other sports training books feature lots of photographs of attractive male and female athletes in superb physical condition performing the exercises. Those pictures have been replaced with graphs displaying cold, hard data in Kurz' book. Kurz does not waste time trying to motivate the reader.

If you are serious about your training and want to be responsible for crafting your own training regimen then this book will be a goldmine for you. The depth and breath of knowledge contained within its pages is astonishing. If, however, you want to be fed example workouts and explicitly told what to do, then you will be confused and frustrated with this book. I can easily see an exasperated reader sceaming "Get to the damn point, Man!" when reading this book. It comes down to whether you want to be your own coach or not. I've found it to be a wonderful resource and would definitely recommend it for advanced athletes and those who are serious about their training. However, for the begining athlete, this may not be the best choice for a first book on subject of scientific training.

Amazon.com

Harvard anthropologist Katherine S. Newman explodes the myth of America's unmotivated poor in No Shame in My Game, a study of low-wage workers and their job-seeking peers in central Harlem. This is a frontline perspective: in addition to hundreds of interviews, Newman also put her research assistants behind the counters of the fast-food restaurants alongside the study's subjects. The results show that America's largest group of impoverished citizens is not the unemployed, but the working poor. But what will move readers most is the struggling workers themselves, who suffer the indignities, exhaustion, and low compensation of jobs as "burger flippers" because, as one fast-food restaurant employee, Larry, says, "It's my job. You ain't puttin' no food on my table; you ain't puttin' no clothes on my back. I will walk tall with my Burger Barn uniform on." Newman explains how obstacles such as cuts in welfare, lack of health insurance (almost half of employed Americans under the poverty line have no coverage), and substandard education undercut even the most determined efforts of working poor like Larry. Fortunately, she also offers a thick list of old and new potential solutions to this crisis, from Earned Income Tax Credits to new training programs linking private industry to public schools with at-risk youth. An essential, eye-opening read. --Maria Dolan

Book Description

"Powerful and poignant.... Newman's message is clear and timely." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

In No Shame in My Game, Harvard anthropologist Katherine Newman gives voice to a population for whom work, family, and self-esteem are top priorities despite all the factors that make earning a living next to impossible--minimum wage, lack of child care and health care, and a desperate shortage of even low-paying jobs. By intimately following the lives of nearly 300 inner-city workers and job seekers for two yearsin Harlem, Newman explores a side of poverty often ignored by media and politicians--the working poor.

The working poor find dignity in earning a paycheck and shunning the welfare system, arguing that even low-paying jobs give order to their lives. No Shame in My Game gives voice to a misrepresented segment of today's society, and is sure to spark dialogue over the issues surrounding poverty, working and welfare.

Customer Reviews:

Some interesting facts in a soup of unselfconscious liberal bias.......2007-02-15

This book is interesting, both for the reasons intended by the author and otherwise.

What the author wants to write about are the working poor. She wants to give you a close-up view of the kind of people who work at fast food places in Harlem. She did study these people in detail, and she shows you alot about them. The book is certainly worth reading for this reason.

What the author does not intend to do, but does, is give an interesting example of the liberal bias which so pervades academics. Her basic unselfconscious assumption is that the poor should not have to work, that there is something morally wrong with a nation which asks the poor to take crappy jobs on their way up the economic ladder.

Newman does everything possible to present her subjects as the helpless victims of an evil system. Over and over, her subjects are people who have blown off school, refused to take the education offered to them by society, gotten no job training of any kind, had children when they were teenagers and otherwise done everything humanly possible to mess up their own lives and make it very unlikely that they will get ahead. Indeed, as Newman describes, most of the people in the area she is studying, in addition to having no useful skills of any sort, have an incredibly bad attitude; they feel compelled to be rude, surly and defiant toward society, which impairs their ability to be hired by service-oreinted business.

Newman NEVER looks at the role of these behaviors in producing the crummy lives of her subjects. She seems to think it is totally natural that an 18 year old will just exist in one of our cities, with no education, no family support, no work experience, no marriage but two kids. Newman never examines why her subjects of placed themselves in such bad situations. Instead, she just presents these people to the reader, as if they had fallen to Earth from another planet, and then asks us to applaud, with her, their moral magnificence, because, instead of joining gangs and turning into drug dealers they instead are willing to submit to the indignity of working for a living.

Newman never even tries for a neutral tone. America is an evil, hideous place that does horrid things to these fabulous people, who are responsible for nothing in their own lives. What is just fascinating about this is that Newman does not think she is writing a polemic. To her, this is science.

A bit dry, but informativeý.......2004-06-27

I was actually assigned to read this book for my Introduction to Sociology class. While I might not have picked it up on my own, I found that it wasn't that bad. Newman tells us stories of the working poor in Harlem, many who work at the local "Burger Barn". Their struggles do really grip you and give you a different picture of these people. While a couple of chapters were a little bogged down in numbers, and Newman assumes her readers are familiar with some aspects of welfare and such, overall, the book was an interesting look into how people try to "make it", that is easily accessible to most.

A wonderful book.......2003-01-04

This is a progessive yet rigorous look at the working poor in the inner city. Like Elijah Anderson, Elliot Liebow, Mitchell Duneier, and Barbara Erenreich, it demonstrates that the poor are more complex than [traditional types] or ideology. Newman is a very insightful scholar who never lets her scholarship get in the way of great writing or balanced analysis. I especially appreciated the way she debunked the notion that these low skilled jobs have nothing to teach.

No Shame in This Game - Must Read.......2001-06-07

This is a hands-on, front line study of America's working poor, a subject so infrequently covered in news media, with gross misunderstandings and negative stereotypes. Katherine Newman and a group of her graduate students from Columbia University spent years learning virtually ALL there is to know about the lives of workers in a fast food burger chain in Harlem in New York City. Through Newman's very accessible language we get to understand who these workers really are, what makes them settle for the lowest of ranks in the American Society, and what motivates them to go and find and keep these jobs.

Newman's very interesting approach is to take us into the lives of her "subjects", we get to know how and with whom do they live, who do they befriend and socialize with, how did they get their jobs and so much more. Relatively early on Newman makes a very clear point; the lives of the welfare poor and the working poor is so intertwined, and changes in welfare laws particularly those related to families with dependent children can make it virtually impossible for the working poor to carry on working. This conclusion emerges so very clearly as we get to know working poor with children whose ONLY possible childcare option is a welfare receiving relative looking after the family's young.

Newman deals very effectively with the cultural misconceptions about the fast food industry, reading this book you can no longer think of hamburger flippers as unskilled underachievers. Often these are brave people who have rejected the easy money drug culture, or people who have had to compete very hard to get low paying low status employment, or have to travel over an hour each way and leave young children behind. And these are jobs that require far more skill in operating equipment, planning and dealing with difficult people on daily basis than many higher paid higher status jobs. When Newman got into the details of the what these jobs really entail, I found myself thinking of much higher status jobs as being lower skilled and these jobs and the people who hold them specially in the inner city, where these are real jobs not pocket money generators, as truly worthy of respect.

Newman work covered a whole range of topics affecting the working poor including a great deal on the values of the working poor, these she found to be so "mainstream" indeed often close to conservative. Those at the bottom of the heap who put up with so much for so little had little tolerance for the do-nothing swindlers, but they did have a high level of tolerance for people otherwise. No Shame in My Game also deals extensively with education, what it means for the working poor and how the employers in the fast food industry encourage it. Indeed we see an alternate culture that encourages achievement is formed around the workplace.

The book also deals with the issues of race, within Harlem along with few examples from the wider world outside of it. We see clear evidence of patterns of discrimination based both on race and on birth place, with foreign born Hispanics fairing best despite of language handicaps and black Americans worst, while mainland US born Hispanics ranked in the middle. Newman also dealt with the prospects for advancement and with the issues of role models at some length.

As I read the book, I often wondered about two issues that appear to a large extent self inflicted, the Teen-age pregnancy was for me an obvious issue. Surely, life would be simpler and potential for advancement would be greater for young women who avoided this trap. Newman dealt with this to some extent by presenting research evidence of young poor women making a conscious decision of avoiding pregnancy when they have a clear path laid ahead of them towards education and attractive employment. Newman also touched on the possibility that teenage pregnancy is related in part to desire to have children at an early enough age to be able to get help from mothers and other relatives; with single parent family being the norm, and with the poor ailing and dying at young age. The second issue was mobility, with so many more jobs available in the suburbs and indeed with unemployment at record lows, why stay in Harlem? As I read on a clearer picture emerges of the society many of the working poor really inhabit. There are, contrary to the popular belief and indeed to mainstream America, there are very strong family links and neighborhood links. These links become vital for the poor with children who need looking after and for immigrants who cluster in apartment ghettos and pool resources in every conceivable way.

The last part of No Shame in My Game presents recommendations for dealing with the urban working poor. There are many interesting new ideas and discussions related to projects tried successfully in other parts of the country. Most of the ideas are presented in a logical and politically neutral fashion that is truly helpful, with significant emphasis being placed on business-school-government programs. A suggestion for raising minimum wage is presented along with the other ideas; it is hard to see how that may help even the sample of the working poor this book focused on, as these working poor live, earn money and spend it mostly in their poor community, and those wonderful employers in the fast food industry, operating on very thin margins, will be forced to either raise prices or reduce labor.

Overall I found No Shame in My Game a wonderful book, full of a great deal of insight, it is so well searched and presented. Newman's language and approach are appealing and the way she builds her arguments and reach conclusion comes across very logical and persuasive. While the recommendations chapter of the book could be extended to a whole book in its own right, and the issues involved are complex and difficult, I felt that additional recommendations on the issues of mobility, teen parenting and race would have been helpful.

Excellent Discussion of the Working Poor.......2001-06-04

Newman crafts an exceptional portrait of the working poor in urban America. The main strength of the book is the way it ties the plight of the working poor to the current policy debate. Particularly, the role of wefare reform in American cities. Although she writes before many changes in the social welfare system, she is able to identify issues that are now key. Unfortunately, some of her policy recommendations are not well suited for the setting that she describes. For instance, the recommendation to create employment cooperatives between primary and secondary sector employers seems underdeveloped, and somewhat inpractical. But, this does not detract from the thrust of the work, which identified employment as a central concern in poor communities. This argument represents the end of a long ugly discussion of social pathology in the inner city, and the start of a more productive discussion of poverty as a problem in mainstream America.

Book Description

This book is about a revolution in spirit and fashion, and the amazing times in which it existed. The 60 marked some of the most important social and cultural turning points in the 20th century. The decade was a time of revolution, with changes occurring across a broad cultural and political spectrum as the generation that was born in the postwar baby boom passed through their teens and early twenties in an era of unprecedented prosperity and unprecedented social upheaval. It was in this time of change that Mary Quant created the first miniskirt, which was the most important fashion revolution of the decade.

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