Top Heavy: A Study of the Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America (A Twentieth Century Fund Report)

Customer Reviews:

A log-normal distribution.......2005-03-17

Edward N. Wolff's study is an extremely clear statistical analysis of a for many reasons rather misty affair: wealth distribution in the US.

His conclusion is that 'in 1989 the top 1 % of US families owned 48 percent of total US wealth'.

His book confirms the ground-breaking sociological studies of William G. Domhoff.

As Richard C. Leone remarks in his excellent introduction: ' We Americans have always flattered ourselves that we have more of two good things than almost anyone else: democracy and opportunity. To be sure, neither is simple.'
For, beneath the top heavy wealthy lays the vast majority of US citizens with their burdens of debt, while a lower part hasn't even social security.

In order to rectify the skewed situation, the author proposed a modest wealth tax, which at the top would not have been more than 10 %. Unfortunately, US fiscal policy went the other way round: taxation on the wealthy was further reduced.

This short study (with many illustrative tables) is a must read for economists and laymen.

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Packed With Knowledge!

NOTHING IS AS PRACTICAL AS A GOOD THEORY

The End of Change: How Your Company Can Sustain Growth and Innovation While Avoiding Change Fatigue
Erik Hoving , Henk Smit , and Arnoud Van Der Slot
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Companies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Leadership | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Organizational Change | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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The Unwritten Rules of the Game: Master Them, Shatter Them, and Break Through the Barriers to Organizational Change

ASIN: 0071357009

Book Description

Peter Scott-Morgan, author of the best-selling, The Unwritten Rules of the Game, and his colleagues at Arthur D. Little have discovered that Fortune 500 companies are currently spending twice their profits on change initiatives; yet they are only satisfied with half the results. The obvious question is How can we stop this? The paradigm-shifting answer, based on a six year study of Fortune 500 companies, is: concentrate on maximizing stability within a changing environment--don't fixate on change. This book explains how by developing the six competencies needed to achieve dynamic stability--the management stabilizers of strategy, tactics, operations, and the enabling stabilizers of teamwork, quality, and communication--companies can avoid being swamped by the disruption of unending turbulence. Peter Scott-Morgan, author of the best-selling, The Unwritten Rules of the Game, and his colleagues at Arthur D. Little have discovered that Fortune 500 companies are currently spending twice their profits on change initiatives; yet they are only satisfied with half the results. The obvious question is How can we stop this? The paradigm-shifting answer, based on a six year study of Fortune 500 companies, is: concentrate on maximizing stability within a changing environment--don't fixate on change. This book explains how by developing the six competencies needed to achieve dynamic stability--the management stabilizers of strategy, tactics, operations, and the enabling stabilizers of teamwork, quality, and communication--companies can avoid being swamped by the disruption of unending turbulence.

Customer Reviews:

Packed With Knowledge!.......2001-05-30

If the wildly successful Who Moved My Cheese? represents the kindergarten version of basic change management theory, The End of Change makes a welcomed leap to graduate-level studies. Authors Peter Scott-Morgan, Erik Hoving, Henk Smith and Arnoud Van Der Slot maintain that many of the concepts intrinsic in the current genre of change management are just plain wrong. In reality, companies that successfully manage change do so by building structures specifically designed to induce and digest change into their overall organizations. In order to explain these structures, the authors present them in the form of geometric shapes - a metaphor that is easy to grasp and easily captures the essence of each strategy. These graphic examples are reinforced with real-life examples of companies and industries that manage change in ways that closely resemble the book's shape-based techniques. We [...] recommend that all executives and students read this book, which takes a sophisticated approach to a topic that has been addressed by a slew of authors and consultants-turned-authors on the most superficial of levels.

NOTHING IS AS PRACTICAL AS A GOOD THEORY.......2000-11-07

Excellent book which strongly stimulates the reader to re-think his own vested ideas about change, innovation and organizational structure. Unlike most "Management books" the End of Change is not a simple "How To" book, tediously listing endless recommendations with bullet points. Due to its compact and clear style this book offers a clear pathway to those trying to cope with relentless change - and who is not ?

Based on a clear and consistent methodology, the End of Change is in the end a very practical book - about people. Although this well structured book contains a lot of easy to be remembered slides and presentations - common in Strategy Consulting nowadays - its strenghts can also be found in its aforisms, examples and methaphors.

Besides other sources (not the least being the year long consulting experience of its authors), the End of Change further builts on Peter Scott Morgan's, "The unwritten Rules of the Game". The basic concepts of the End of Change enable the reader to deepen his insight in the dynamics of change in general - while giving him the opportunity to apply these to his own personal experiences and areas of business life which have been to much neglected in periods of serious change (for example, amongst many others, Recruting & HR policies)

For those who are interested how changing business environments effect our daily lives, this book is a " Must-Read".

Book Description

The cat has been used as a subject for dissection in the study of mammalian anatomy for almost two centuries. The very popular Pictorial Anatomy of the Cat by Stephen G. Gilbert, originally published in 1967 and now in its twelfth printing, has been used in countless laboratories as a guide to dissection and supplement to introductory textbooks.

Outline of the Cat Anatomy with Reference to the Human is an abridged version on the original guide, modified for practical use in one-semester courses. It employs anatomical terms used in human rather than veterinary anatomy and includes illustrations of human anatomy that may be compared with those of the cat.

Customer Reviews:

Good for the price.......2006-03-11

This book is great for the price but really gives short shrift to the cat anatomy. The pictures and descriptions would be much more helpful if it emphasized more of the cat anatomy.

Great book for a great price.......2005-09-25

This book is great for those taking or teaching a class that uses cat dissection. This book does an excellent job of comparing and contrasting human and cat structures. The only problem is that it doesn't include every muscle in the cat and the human.

wonderful.......2005-08-13

I am taking a course in human anatomy. One night, my cat decided to crawl up with me and look at the book. I started to wonder, what is the difference between human anatomy, and my cats?

My vet suggested this book. It's good for someone who doesn't know much about anatomy, and it does compare kitty's with your own. My only gripe is I wish the book had been in color.

Book Description

An important element in Japanese baseball is wa--group harmony--embodied in the proverb "The nail that sticks up shall be hammered down". But what if the nail is a visiting American player? Here's a look at Japanese baseball, as seen by baffled Americans

Customer Reviews:

Japanese Baseball Demystified.......2007-08-12

With the influx of Japanese stars into the US Major Leagues, many sports fans are becoming intrigued by the league across the Pacific and the ballplayers who play in it. Reading this book, along with Mr. Whiting's two others, Chrysanthemum at the Bat and The Meaning of Ichiro, will give you the best understanding availible. This book focuses more on the relationship between Japan and the American ballplayers who play over there, but there is a lot on Japanese players, the history of the game in Japan, and the culture of Japanese baseball. It was written in the late 1980s, but still is informative to a reader 20 years later.

Homu Ran!.......2007-05-08

What a fun book this was! It's very quick and easy reading - a fast reader can get through it on a plane trip or on a Sunday afternoon. I also gave it to a family member who was laid up with an illness, and he found it to be a good distraction. I myself picked this book up originally because I was interested in Japanese-American cultural conflicts and issues. I also just so happen to enjoy Dodger basu-baru.

This book has some very entertaining stories and pictures. My favorite is a picture of a Japanese catcher being taught how to crouch behind the plate by squatting above a board with spikes pointing up toward his privates! Ouch!...that's one way to keep focused! There's also a funny shot of all the Japanese team managers dressed up in samurai armor and sort of scowling at the camera - they look fearsome, all right!

The book did give me the kind of information I was seeking, though. Through the prism of baseball, it deals with some of the most important contrasts between American and Japanese culture. For example, the Japanese are much more likely to play when injured, for to do otherwise is "weak". This book tells the story of a pitcher with a torn ligament in his pitching arm who tried to "pitch through the pain", and could not get help from the Japanese sports doctors. He finally had to go to the US to get treatment, starting a rush of Japanese athletes who sought consultation and surgery here in the US that they were ashamed to seek in Japan.

I was also very interested in the story about how baseball came to be introduced to Japan (though an American schoolteacher). Before long, Japanese youth were being subjected to intense training in baseball which rivals that for martial arts.

Some posters here have mentioned that the book is two decades old, and somewhat out-of-date in terms of the players discussed. I didn't really mind that, and found it, all-in-all to be a very enjoyable and interesting read.

The most thorough (yet sadly outdated) account of Japanese Baseball you can find.......2007-01-26

As a long-time Japanese baseball fan, I was very excited to finally receive this book and start reading it. Robert Whiting has done an excellent job of finding material that is usually not accessible for the average foreign fan of Japanese baseball, simply due to the fact that everything is written in Japanese.

Whiting has succeeded in creating a very enjoyable and very interesting "summary" of Japanese baseball as a whole, and really portrays just how differently the game is played and thought of in the East. In particular, the mentality of Japanese baseball that he describes, along with the accounts of many of the players were eye-opening.

It's just such a shame that the book is published in 1988, with no revisions forthcoming since then, because, as is inevitable with time, baseball in Japan has moved on.

In the modern game, the popularity of the "Yomiuri Giants" which Whiting talks at length in his book are declining - so much so that they have trouble filling the stadium or even getting good ratings on TV. In fact, baseball as a sport in Japan as a whole has been on a gradual decline in the face of Soccer, which, when Whiting wrote "You Gotta Have Wa", was unthinkable.

There have also been great shifts in terms of the power of Japanese baseball: away from the Giants to other teams, and the players union even went on strike in objection to the loss of player jobs following the merger of the Orix Bluewaves and Osaka Buffaloes. Whiting wrote however that the player's union would never consider striking, as that was the Japanese player's mentality. This signifies just how much the game has changed in Japan. Further, the systems have been edited to incorporate playoffs, and foreign coaches in Japan are now found at three clubs - a vastly different landscape to the one which Whiting reported on so excellently twenty years ago.

Even though the book is outdated however, it is still a very enjoyable and very thorough account of baseball and the mentality of baseball in Japan. For anyone with an interest in the sport in Japan, I would highly recommend reading it, as very little else is available which is of a similar quality to "You Gotta Have Wa".

But when reading, I just cant help but feel how worthy a book this would be if updated with information on the modern game. With stars like Matsui, Matsuzaka and Ichiro now plying their trades in the US, Whiting would have a lot to talk about.

I recommend it: Just realise that the game has moved on a little from then.

what other country would name a baseball team the Ham Fighters.......2006-12-08

There is no doubt that the author has a firm grasp of Japanese culture. For that I would give him five stars. His knowledge of baseball is only passing for a professional writer, and make cause hard core baseball fans to be left wanting for more detail.

The book was written in the late 1980s and reads a bit dated, but the stories of how a select group of American ballplayers attempt to integrate into Japanese style baseball is still interesting and worth a read during the long baseball-less winter. It was also written before the days of all-star players like Ichiro came from Japan to America and dominated. During the 1980s, you could be a semi-over the hill overweight American and still hit 340 with 40 homers in Japan.

The author's knowledge of Japan was first rate and his obviously lived in the country for a long time. The book is about baseball, but is really about how the Japanese culture is still struggling to integrate culturally with the rest of the world. I would reccomend it for the baseball reader who is looking for something unique.

Fun read.......2006-07-21

This book is a fun read about American players in Japan. From my experience seeing a game in Japan, it is a bit dated, but I'm glad I read it beforehand. It gets repetitive at the end. The chapter about translators is a hoot! A great companion volume to the movie, Mr. Baseball.

You Gotta Have Wa When Two Cultures Collide on Baseball

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You Gotta Have Wa When Two Cultures Collide on Baseball

Manufacturer: Macmillan & Collier Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HZ6AGQ

You Gotta Have Wa* When Two Baseball Clutures Collide on the Baseball Diamond

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You Gotta Have Wa* When Two Baseball Clutures Collide on the Baseball Diamond

Manufacturer: Macmillian
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000I8EXFC

You Gotta Have Wa* (When Two Cultures Collide on the Baseball Diamond, * From the Japanese meaning team spirit, unity the ball club always comes first)

Average customer rating:

You Gotta Have Wa* (When Two Cultures Collide on the Baseball Diamond, * From the Japanese meaning team spirit, unity the ball club always comes first)

Manufacturer: Macmillan Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000FMZC9C

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You Gotta Have Wa: When Two Cultures Collide on the Baseball Diamond
Robert Whiting
Manufacturer: MACMILLAN PUBLISHING CO.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OKOBVA

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YOU GOTTA HAVE WA
Robert Whiting
Manufacturer: MacMillan Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000O98JE6

Average customer rating:

You Gotta Have Wa
Robert Whiting
Manufacturer: Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000PK3P5M

Average customer rating:

You Gotta Have Wa*
Robert Whitnig
Manufacturer: Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OEO63O

Average customer rating:

You Gotta Have Wa* When Two Baseball Clutures Collide on the Baseball Diamond
Robert Whiting
Manufacturer: Macmillian
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000TZV1P4

Average customer rating:

You Gotta Have Wa* (When two Cultures collide on the baseball diamond, from the Japanese meaning team spirit, unity, the ball club always comes first)

Manufacturer: Macmillan Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000FMTAT0

Book Description

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is one of the world's best-loved reference books. First published in 1870, this treasury of 'words that have a tale to tell has established itself as one of the great reference classics-the first port of call for tens of thousands of terms, phrases and proper names, and a fund of fascinating, unusual and out-of-the-way information.

At the heart of the dictionary lie entries on the meaning and origin of a vast range of words and expressions, from everyday phrases to Latin tags. Alongside these are articles on people and events in mythology and religion, and on folk customs, superstitions and beliefs. Major events and people in history are also treated, as are movements in art and literature, famous literary characters, and key aspects of popular culture, philosophy, geography, science and magic. To complete this rich mix of information, Brewer and his subsequent editors have added an extraordinary and enticing miscellany of general knowledge-lists of patron saints, terms in heraldry, regimental nicknames, public house names, and famous last words.

For the sixteenth edition of Brewer's the entire existing text has been revised and updated and over 1000 new articles added. These include:

recent expressions (the full monty, couch

potato, bit the ground running, Montezuma's revenge)

recent events and organizations (Black Wednesday, Taliban)

famous nicknames (Fab Four)

historical and fictional characters (Attila the Hun, Anne Frank).

Brand-new articles on hurricane names, celebrated place-names in literature, and frequently mispronounced words continue the century-old Brewer's practice of recording unexpected and fascinating information that is not available in other general reference books.

Customer Reviews:

worth getting the latest edition.......2007-05-23

What I have is this 16th edition, published in 2002. Here's the link to the newest edition, which came out last year: Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (17th Edition).

This is a rich resource, but understand that it has a very British bent. You get to learn that "beer and sandwiches" means informal negotiations, the "Dashing White Sergeant" is a Scottish country dance, "Brigg Fair" is an English rhapsody for orchestra, and "Emmets" are what tourists are called in Cornwall. Two pages are devoted to a list of football club nicknames -- The Addicks, the Rokermen, the Mambas...

I also found this description of the Chicago Bears amusing: "A record-breaking professional American football team, with a home base at Wrigley Field."

Despite that outdated info, I still found this useful and enjoyable to read, and I recommend getting it as a reference book for allusions and cultural literacy. There are entries on the Popemobile, Siegfried Line, Lady Bird, a shot in the arm, Iris (the movie), Comstockery, chicken Kiev, golden hello, Suzuki method, KGB, Manchukuo, planned obsolescence, zuppa inglese and Zut alors!

There are also extended entries featuring lists of 20th-century advertising slogans, aircraft names, famous last words, film star nicknames, first lines of novels, medical abbreviations, rock group names, and Soviet sayings.

A Gem!.......2006-07-12

As a resource for any student or scholar, Brewer's is a unique and indispensible resource of esoteric or little known information. I possess the Centenary Edition of 1970 which was discarded from London's Homerton College Library.

Brewer's picks up where other reference books leave off. With approximately six-thousand unusual quotations, the reader will be well read and prepared to take on the day; be it an opening toast, or a debate between orators. I rate it at five stars plus with no hesitation or reservation.

For my Desert Island...........2005-03-02

What a book!!! Imagine a dictionary + thesaurus + encyclopedia, all binded together with alphabetically listed topics (sublime,sacred,profane,outrageous,obscure,eldritch,et al) which cross-reference each other through (seemingly) never-ending threads of association,relativity and/or conspiracy!!!

You can start with one subject and find yourself time-traveling through history and mythology...touching on a plethora of events, peoples, places, philosophies and diverse arcana from time immemorial.

I have thouroughly read (and re-read) a much earlier edition(11th) until my pages started falling out. As soon as I get the $$ I'm gonna buy this 16th edition and begin my adventures again.

Highly recommended for those who love this Universe and the multitude of histories intwined.

Totally absorbing and enchanting.......2004-03-08

I never thought I'd describe a reference book as unputdownable, but once you open this book to look one thing up (say, a peculiar expression that someone has just said, "Now why *do* we say that?" about), you'll find yourself reading all the entries in sight! Very useful for anyone with an interest in literature, history, or language and great fun to use, with a distinctly tongue-in-cheek feel to it (the hilarious section on "Famous Last Words", for instance).

It makes a really lovely present for young and old: it looks suitably impressive, has fairly universal appeal provided they're a fan of the written word, and is far livelier than the standard reference books that get trotted out on Important Occasions. I have given this to my best friend, my step-dad, and a second cousin who has just come of age; the latter (aged 13) hasn't been heard from yet (we calculated that there's a pretty good chance he's going to read it, unlike most of the books he's bound to have received), but the other two have adored it, and friends who have been introduced to my copy usually end up spending a good hour leafing through it. A huge number of phrases, expressions, and characters from myth, history and literature are there, but I still want to know where the word "codswallop" comes from...

A great collection of the obscure.......2002-03-04

I'd have given this book five stars if it had been written for American audiences. Its full of english words and phrases, but a lot of them originated in Britain after the revolution, so did not make it across the Atlantic.

Even so, this is an excellent reference, explaining the origins of words and phrases we are so accustomed to hearing that we rarely stop to wonder why they are used. I got a copy for myself, and then another as a gift for a trivia-loving sister-in-law.

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Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 16e (Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable)
Adrian Room
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000MUCB4G

Book Description

Over 1,000 illustrations, meticulously reproduced from rare issues of renowned fashion magazine, present a striking array of women’s fashions from 1860 to 1914: elegant evening and dinner gowns, stylish daywear, wedding ensembles, bathing costumes, mourning clothes, cycling outfits and much more; plus detailed renderings of shoes, hats, parasols, and other accessories.

Customer Reviews:

Another definitive reference on the topic of 19th-century fashion.......2006-08-13

"La Mode Illustree" was to 19th-century fashion mavens what "Vogue" and "Elle" are today, with its gorgeous color and B&W line illustrations of the latest in fashions for men, women and children. Joanne Olian, former curator of the costume collection at the Museum of the City of New York, has painstakingly assembled a huge collection of the finest illustrations showing beautiful ladies' fashions from 1860 to 1912, with almost every year getting at least one page (though, as another reviewer mentions, some years unfortunately aren't examined in much detail). Every illustration is full-page and accompanied by a paragraph or two of text, generally taken directly from the original description of the item in LMI. Nobody who is at all interested in fashions of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods should be without this book!

The best resource I've yet to find for this period!.......2002-02-06

This book is one of the most comprehensive, well-done and complete guide to both Victorian and Edwardian fashion I've ever seen. Although the illustrations are black and white, they are surprisingly well done (most costume design books don't detail hair styles, patterns, etc, but this one does.) I recommend this book as a very accurate guide to the period for researchers, costumers or fashion enthusiasts. The book, along with fantastic illustrations, includes a summary of the times and fashions and a very helpful glossary. Also it is much more than any other book I've seen--- it included SEVERAL fashions for each year and several different occasional wear layouts. If you are curious about this period, you must buy this book. I only wish they had a similar book for every period!

Don't let the cover fool you!.......2000-03-17

I was leery of ordering this book, because most of the books that claim to illustrate both the Victorian and Edwardian eras merely skim over the Edwardian. But I was pleasantly surprised.

The book covers the years 1860-1914 and gives equal (or slightly superior) coverage to the Edwardian and pre-WWI years. The illustrations are large and detailed, allowing for very good views of the trimmings of the garments, and the smaller rear views of many garments are invaluable to the recreationist. Also included are period captions describing the intended uses of the garments (tea or opera, for young girls or women "of a certain age"); these are both interesting and very helpful for the self-educated costumer. The selection of dresses, coiffures, hats, parasols, coats, lingerie, nightdresses, and children's clothing is well chosen and the garments are lovely.

My only complaint is that a few years are either entirely skipped, or skimmed over: 1866, 1872, 1875, 1878, 1883, 1893, 1899, and 1911. However, the existing material is excellent and very useful--I wholeheartedly recommend it.

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