Books

An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It

Average customer rating:

The best book I've read so far in 2007
Your Conscience Speaks
A tragedy where both the villian and the victim is the humanity
An Inconvenient Truth
Brilliant environmental reference

An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It
Al Gore
Manufacturer: Rodale Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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An Inconvenient Truth
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The Assault on Reason

ASIN: 1594865671
Release Date: 2006-05-26

Book Description

Our climate crisis may at times appear to be happening slowly, but in fact it is happening very quickly-and has become a true planetary emergency. The Chinese expression for crisis consists of two characters. The first is a symbol for danger; the second is a symbol for opportunity. In order to face down the danger that is stalking us and move through it, we first have to recognize that we are facing a crisis. So why is it that our leaders seem not to hear such clarion warnings? Are they resisting the truth because they know that the moment they acknowledge it, they will face a moral imperative to act? Is it simply more convenient to ignore the warnings? Perhaps, but inconvenient truths do not go away just because they are not seen. Indeed, when they are responded to, their significance doesnt diminish; it grows. -- Al Gore

Customer Reviews:

The best book I've read so far in 2007.......2007-06-30

Rarely does one come across a book that carries an important message from a high profile figure. For me, Thomas Friedman's "The World Is Flat" Updated & Expanded 2006 Edition of the World Is Flat was such a book for 2006. This year, 2007, it surely has to be Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

The message is clear. Through our lifestyles, we are destroying the only home we know - this world - through the build-up of carbon emissions. And we are careening towards the cliff faster than we know. We can make a change and it has to start now and with great intensity. For far too long, we've ignored this truth because it is an inconvenient one. It requires us to make changes that will cost us time, effort and money. But we can make that change. We've succeeded before in respect of CFC and the oxone layer.

I also like some of the more personal parts of the book where Al Gore talks about his family, especially his father, growing up with nature, camping trips with his wife and kids, his son's accident and his sister's death from lung cancer. He weaves all these into the book's broader message.

The book is also an excellent example of clear thinking, writing, passion and presentation. There are no chapters - just one continuous message. Try to finish this in one sitting. The message is gripping. And it reads like one helluva power-packed powerpoint presentation. The use of graphics, photos and charts is reminiscent of Gary Hamel's Leading The Revolution Leading the Revolution. Students of the art of presentation will do well to emulate Al Gore's style.

Your Conscience Speaks.......2007-06-27

There is nothing I can say about this work that hasn't already been said. This is required reading for all Americans. WE must lead the way and set an example for the rest of the world. The pictures are wonderful. Everyone should have this book.

A tragedy where both the villian and the victim is the humanity.......2007-06-23

Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet's climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced- a mind-boggling disaster tale that draws its special power from the fact that we are both the villians and the victims of the story.

The author is a former Vice President Al Gore, who, in the wake of defeat in the 2000 election, re-set the course of his life to focus on an all-out effort to help save the planet from irrevocable change. With wit, smarts and humor, 'An Inconvenient Truth' ultimately brings Gore's persuasive argument that we can no longer afford to view global warming as a political issue - rather, it is the biggest moral challenge facing our global civilization. Gore-haters and global-warming naysayers will try to dismiss it, but it's hard to imagine how anyone -- no matter what their political or religious persuasion, or personal feelings about the former vice president -- can sit through it and not be profoundly affected.

The debate, Gore says, is over. The scientific community agrees the planet is heating up, we are primarily responsible, the effects are catastrophic, the effects are accelerating and there is still time to turn it around -- but not much time, maybe a decade.

Gore states and provides evidence that we are melting the North Polar ice cap and virtually all of the mountain glaciers in the world. We are destabilizing the massive mounds of ice on the Greenland and the equally enormous mass of ice propped up on the top of islands in West Antartica, threatning a worldwide increase in sea levels of as much as twenty feet. The list of what is now endangered due to global warming also includes the continued stable configuration of ocean and wind currents that has been in place since before the first cities were built almost 10,000 years ago.

We are dumping so much carbon dioxide into the Earth's environment that we have literally changed the relationship between the Earth and the Sun. So much of that CO2 is being absorbed into the oceans that if we continue at the current rate we will increase the saturation of calcium carbonate to levels that will prevent formation of corals and interfere with the making of shells by any sea creature.

Global warming, along with the cutting and burning of forests and other critical habitats, is causing the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That event was believed to have been caused by a giant asteroid. This time it is not an asteroid colliding with the Earth and wreaking havoc; it is us.

An Inconvenient Truth.......2007-06-11

I bought the book to be able to go over the charts used in the movie. Very impressive. A valuable tool for teaching purposes. His facts are straight, no bleeding heart stuff.

Brilliant environmental reference.......2007-06-07

The book is in essence a compendium for the movie by the same name and author, but an excellent one at that. It also works as a standalone reference and environmental document that everyone should read, regardless of having seen the movie.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Average customer rating:

Lame wrap up
Brown Bear review
Must Have for Your Eric Carle Collection
My daughter has it memorized...
We *love* Eric Carle- I see a teacher looking at me....

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
Bill Martin Jr.
Manufacturer: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Board book

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The Very Hungry Caterpillar board book
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ASIN: 0805047905

Product Description

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Amazon.com

The gentle rhyming and gorgeous, tissue-paper collage illustrations in this classic picture book make it a dog-eared favorite on many children's bookshelves. On each page, we meet a new animal who nudges us onward to discover which creature will show up next: "Blue Horse, Blue Horse, What do you see? I see a green frog looking at me." This pattern is repeated over and over, until the pre-reader can chime in with the reader, easily predicting the next rhyme. One thing readers might not predict, however, is just what kinds of funny characters will make an appearance at the denouement! Children on the verge of reading learn best with plenty of identifiable images and rhythmic repetition. Eric Carle's good-humored style and colorful, bold illustrations (like those in The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Grouchy Ladybug, and Have You Seen My Cat?) have earned him a prominent place in the children's book hall of fame. (Baby to Preschool) --Emilie Coulter

Customer Reviews:

Lame wrap up.......2007-06-28

My children have both enjoyed this book and my three-year-old son can tell the story from memory. Great rythym, beautiful illustrations... but once you get to the end it seems like a let down. I can't really explain it, but the rest of the book is so cute and engaging that the students/teacher part seems out of place.

I'd label this a "favorite" rather than a "classic." For classics, I look to wonderful works such as Wynken, Blynken & Nod, Aesop's Fables or a Child's Garden of Verses.

Recommended.

Brown Bear review.......2007-06-26

This is an excellent book. All children, including my 3 year-old, seem to absolutely love it! It is catchy and the children learn colours and animals in a fun way. Educational and fun - what more could you want??

Must Have for Your Eric Carle Collection.......2007-06-19

Definitely one of our favorites, up there with Very Hungry Caterpillar.

My daughter has it memorized..........2007-06-18

...and she loves this book!! Started reading this to her at around 2, and she still likes it. HI FIVE to the editor for making the illustration changes so that all children could relate to it. This had a huge impact on me as I would have passed on it. Thanks again, it's a classic. :)

We *love* Eric Carle- I see a teacher looking at me...........2007-06-02

What's not to love? Every child needs lots of Eric Carle books- we were able to find these basics in large size board book, and they still read them even in his kindergarten class (he has a fabulous teacher, but I presume they all utilize them!). We think kids need reading to every day from the time they're born or so- and these fun, short, colorful books keep their attention and help them learn to enjoy reading and learning!

Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!

Average customer rating:

Great But Somewhat Limited
I wish my Dad had been rich
Great book - There are other great books too...
A must read book for everyone.
Great for a change in your mindset

Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
Robert T. Kiyosaki , and Sharon L. Lechter
Manufacturer: Business Plus
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Think and Grow Rich

ASIN: 0446677450

Amazon.com

Personal-finance author and lecturer Robert Kiyosaki developed his unique economic perspective through exposure to a pair of disparate influences: his own highly educated but fiscally unstable father, and the multimillionaire eighth-grade dropout father of his closest friend. The lifelong monetary problems experienced by his "poor dad" (whose weekly paychecks, while respectable, were never quite sufficient to meet family needs) pounded home the counterpoint communicated by his "rich dad" (that "the poor and the middle class work for money," but "the rich have money work for them"). Taking that message to heart, Kiyosaki was able to retire at 47. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, written with consultant and CPA Sharon L. Lechter, lays out his the philosophy behind his relationship with money. Although Kiyosaki can take a frustratingly long time to make his points, his book nonetheless compellingly advocates for the type of "financial literacy" that's never taught in schools. Based on the principle that income-generating assets always provide healthier bottom-line results than even the best of traditional jobs, it explains how those assets might be acquired so that the jobs can eventually be shed. --Howard Rothman

Book Description

Rich Dad, Poor Dad chronicles the story of the authors two dads, his own father, who wa the superintendent of education in Hawaii and who ended up dying penniless and his best friends father who dropped out of school at age 13 and went on to become one of the wealthiest men in Hawaii. Kiyosaki uses the story of these two men and their varying financial strategies to illustrate the need for a new financial paradigm in order to achieve financial success in the new millennium.

Download Description

A #1 New York Times bestseller, 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' is a true story on the lessons about money that Robert Kiyosaki learned from his two "dads." One dad, a Ph.D. and superintendent of education, never had enough money at the end of the month and died broke. His other dad dropped out of school at age 13 and went on to become one of the wealthiest men in Hawaii. 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' will . . .· Explode the myth that you need to earn a high income to become rich · Challenge the belief that your house is an asset · Show parents why they can't rely on the school system to teach their kids about money
· Define once and for all an asset and a liability · Teach you what to teach your kids about money for their future financial success. In 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad', Robert Kiyosaki explains how to make your money work hard for you instead of you working hard for money.

Customer Reviews:

Great But Somewhat Limited.......2007-06-29

This book is worth all the hype...with limitations.

Kiyosaki shares valuable insights into money management in a friendly tone with limited use of jargon and one can see success within reach.

BUT, one can interpret his 'this is so easy anyone can do it' tone as somewhat head-in-the-clouds. He's rich now - he can say anything. There are times he is sharing about a successful deal where he 'just' spent $50,000 - that alienates the folks who don't even have that to spend. He writes assuming that there is some basis upon which you can build - that you have a couple hundred thousand dollars lying around to throw at some investments. It leaves one feeling 'easy-for-you-to-sayish'.

He seems to specialize in real estate and that limits whom he can help, especially if the real estate market in your country is nothing like that of the US. Certainly the ideas and methods he taught do not apply in the least in my country.

He does teach general ideas that are very helpful and make perfect sense. He emphasizes the attendant character and attitude that good money management takes and demonstrates said attitudes through his writing.

I put the book down feeling like it was written for a certain type - he lost points for that - persons who have a decent amount of money already. I don't recommend it if your are working your way up from nothing like me.

Nevertheless its worth the time and the best lesson was to get educated about money - but I don't consider him the best teacher.

I wish my Dad had been rich.......2007-06-25

This book confirms what many of us who grew up in a blue collar family have learned over a long period of years. This book gives young people a definite advantage of hearing the "other side" early in life, before college and while they are still optimistic. It also reinforces the American dream of becoming wealthy in just one generatiion.

This book contains the type of information and attitude that I hope to instill in my grandchildren. It is packed with insight and presents it in an entertaining, easy to read format.

Great book - There are other great books too..........2007-06-21

Great book! Another good book that helped me tremendously was the one at www.financial-planning-book.com. I wish amazon sold the book from there. It was called Best Financial Planning Book and was the absolute best book on financial planning that I've ever read. Hope that helps someone.

A must read book for everyone........2007-06-15

Everyone should read this book and the earlier in life the better.

Great for a change in your mindset.......2007-06-11

I first read this book about two years ago and instantly loved it. I recently read it again hoping to reignite that same enthusiasm I initially experienced. I'll agree with other posters that a great literary work it is not, however, I have to say that I believe it achieves its intended goal. This book will prompt one to "think outside of the box" and for me that was catalyst enough to change how I viewed and ultimately chose to pursue what I wanted to do to earn a living. Do not buy this book if you are looking for a step by step guide to get rich quick or find investment advice. It definitely will not provide that. If you're looking for a book to help facilitate a mindset reset, then you can't go wrong with this one. I know many successful investors that swear by its contribution to doing just that for them.

Leap!: What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives?

Average customer rating:

"Leap!" is terrific!
Leap Was A Let Down
LOVED Leap!
disappointing and disjointed
Primes the pump

Leap!: What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives?
Sara Davidson
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

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Thinking About Tomorrow: Reinventing Yourself at Midlife
Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties
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ASIN: 0345478088
Release Date: 2007-02-20

Book Description

Thirty years ago, Sara Davidson wrote the phenomenal bestseller Loose Change, the definitive book about the boomer generation’s coming-of-age. Now this witty social observer has again turned her discerning eye to her contemporaries, with Leap!, a no-holds-barred, illuminating, and hopeful look at the choices and challenges we face and the roads open to us.

For many years Davidson earned a living as a successful journalist and screenwriter, but in her fifties she saw her life come apart: She could no longer find work, she endured a break-up with her partner, and her children left for college. For the first time ever, she had nothing to do. She felt adrift, but she found that she was not alone.

In Leap!, Davidson sets out on a passionate quest to learn how to do the coming years well. Drawing on her own experience and that of others, she explores such questions as

• How does a high-powered person learn to walk down the ladder gracefully?
• How can women continue to be sensual and not touch-deprived?
• How do we arrange to grow old with our friends?
• What will be the fire at the center of our lives?
• Why are we still here?

Davidson interviews people from across the country and from all walks of life, including such icons as Carly Simon, Tom Hayden, Tracy Kidder, Jane Fonda, Ram Dass, and Iman, as well as teachers, writers, psychologists, businesspeople, and spiritual leaders. The candid portraits are both inspiring and cautionary.

True to character, boomers will approach these years differently from previous generations, and there will be no single path. Some will feel free for the first time to take risks; others will embark upon a spiritual search; some will want to give back, to make the world a better place; others will want to play or make creativity a priority. But they will not fade quietly into the sunset.

With Leap!, Sara Davidson holds up a mirror for readers, allowing them to see not only themselves and those around them but their potential future. With Davidson as a guide, the possibilities are boundless.

Customer Reviews:

"Leap!" is terrific!.......2007-07-01

I just finished Sara Davidson's new book and thought it was great! I'm a just-turned-60 baby boomer and I really enjoyed her interviews with other people of this age as well as some of the ideas she had for what we should do with the rest of our lives. I especially enjoyed the section on co-housing -- and dating after 60! I guess it's still possible! I admire Sara Davidson for her inquisitiveness and her defiance that she, for one, is NOT going to turn into a fusty, little old lady. I'm with her!! Read it -- you'll like it!

Leap Was A Let Down.......2007-06-28

This book promised a lot and delivered very little. The cover tag touts: informative, entertaining, and above all, helpful. Leap! strikes out on all three counts. It read like a boring letter from an acquaintance who was very into name-dropping. I've enjoyed other people's vacation pictures more. There was nothing in this book that provided boomers with real-world options to use as they move through this life transition. Most of us don't relate to Jane Fonda, Carly Simon or the CEO of Air America Radio. What I was looking for was some advice from others in their boomer years for coping with life after 50. I wanted tried-and-true ideas about what to do now that my kids are grown and I have some time to devote to myself. This book is not the place to find that information. But if you want to read about all the famous writers, actors, models, etc. that Sara Davidson has known, this is the book for you.

LOVED Leap!.......2007-06-27

I just finished Leap! I am sorry that it ended. Sara Davidson has fast become one of my favorite authors. Her style is easy to read, and her facinating details really draw you in. If you are a baby boomer, you should read this book! If you are not a baby boomer, you will be 50 one day, and you should read this book too!

disappointing and disjointed.......2007-06-19

I bought this book having read an early chapter online, but found that much of the rest of the book did not follow through on the promise of that chapter. Also, in my opinion, the book became mired half way through in way too much detail about middle aged sexuality, not to mention the excruciating and unnecessarily lengthy description of face lift surgery--this is not at all what I expected to read about here. I am a boomer, soon to be empty nester, no longer in a relationship after thirty years of relationships, a little bored at work after twenty something years in the same field, and did not learn much beyond don't panic and stay open, which is useful as far as it goes. I liked the chapter called The Narrows and wanted more in that vein. A much much better book that might serve the same purpose is Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Primes the pump.......2007-06-18

Leap goes far beyond being interesting and informative. Davidson's willingness to be open, honest, and vulnerable about her own journey plus the many resources she includes, provide that essential cup of water that stimulates the old pump (brain) to bring forth an overflow of creative ideas for work and service.

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently

Average customer rating:

Essential Management Advice
Buckingham is full of the right stuff
Twelve brutally honest questions that every organization should ask its employees
Loved It!
Great Management Book!

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently
Marcus Buckingham , and Curt Coffman
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Now, Discover Your Strengths
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Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

ASIN: 0684852861

Amazon.com

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman expose the fallacies of standard management thinking in First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently. In seven chapters, the two consultants for the Gallup Organization debunk some dearly held notions about management, such as "treat people as you like to be treated"; "people are capable of almost anything"; and "a manager's role is diminishing in today's economy." "Great managers are revolutionaries," the authors write. "This book will take you inside the minds of these managers to explain why they have toppled conventional wisdom and reveal the new truths they have forged in its place."

The authors have culled their observations from more than 80,000 interviews conducted by Gallup during the past 25 years. Quoting leaders such as basketball coach Phil Jackson, Buckingham and Coffman outline "four keys" to becoming an excellent manager: Finding the right fit for employees, focusing on strengths of employees, defining the right results, and selecting staff for talent--not just knowledge and skills. First, Break All the Rules offers specific techniques for helping people perform better on the job. For instance, the authors show ways to structure a trial period for a new worker and how to create a pay plan that rewards people for their expertise instead of how fast they climb the company ladder. "The point is to focus people toward performance," they write. "The manager is, and should be, totally responsible for this." Written in plain English and well organized, this book tells you exactly how to improve as a supervisor. --Dan Ring

Book Description

The greatest managers in the world seem to have little in common. They differ in sex, age, and race. They employ vastly different styles and focus on different goals. Yet despite their differences, great managers share one common trait: They do not hesitate to break virtually every rule held sacred by conventional wisdom. They do not believe that, with enough training, a person can achieve anything he sets his mind to. They do not try to help people overcome their weaknesses. They consistently disregard the golden rule. And, yes, they even play favorites. This amazing book explains why.

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman of the Gallup Organization present the remarkable findings of their massive in-depth study of great managers across a wide variety of situations. Some were in leadership positions. Others were front-line supervisors. Some were in Fortune 500 companies; others were key players in small, entrepreneurial companies. Whatever their situations, the managers who ultimately became the focus of Gallup's research were invariably those who excelled at turning each employee's talent into performance.

In today's tight labor markets, companies compete to find and keep the best employees, using pay, benefits, promotions, and training. But these well-intentioned efforts often miss the mark. The front-line manager is the key to attracting and retaining talented employees. No matter how generous its pay or how renowned its training, the company that lacks great front-line managers will suffer. Buckingham and Coffman explain how the best managers select an employee for talent rather than for skills or experience; how they set expectations for him or her -- they define the right outcomes rather than the right steps; how they motivate people -- they build on each person's unique strengths rather than trying to fix his weaknesses; and, finally, how great managers develop people -- they find the right fit for each person, not the next rung on the ladder. And perhaps most important, this research -- which initially generated thousands of different survey questions on the subject of employee opinion -- finally produced the twelve simple questions that work to distinguish the strongest departments of a company from all the rest. This book is the first to present this essential measuring stick and to prove the link between employee opinions and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and the rate of turnover.

There are vital performance and career lessons here for managers at every level, and, best of all, the book shows you how to apply them to your own situation.

Customer Reviews:

Essential Management Advice.......2007-06-30

Great book for analyzing how to manage others, and develop keener abilities into why some in management excel and achieve superior results and others never build on what they inherit. There is a buffet of statistics to back up the analysis and add credibilitiy. This is a fine addition to anyone's library of self-improvement books to be more efficient and effective in business.

Likewise, the employee can intuitively reverse engineer the information and make his performance more in tune with superiors, and set himself up for moving up the ladder. Great book.

Buckingham is full of the right stuff.......2007-06-18

This is a great book with outstanding information, the research involved and sheer numbers of people that participated is mind boggling.

Twelve brutally honest questions that every organization should ask its employees.......2007-05-14

In quantum physics, one of the competing theories that explains the nature of the universe is called m-theory, or (I hear) membrane-theory. In business literature and specifically HR or employee satisfaction related literature, there is an equivalent m-theory, called management-theory or the might-mean-many-meanings-theory. Neither a rigorous natural science, nor an elevated art form, management theory often consists of generalizations, cliches, obvious truths, dogmas, and meta-patterns of meta-patterns that describe 'what should be'.

As a contra-example of good management-theory, this book is about 'what works'. The authors use 12 very basic and brutally honest questions as the yardstick for organization to measure the success of their employee engagement, and based on the ideal/wished for results for these 12 questions, outline various 'things to do' for practicing managers.

Being a practicing manager for 3 years now, I found this book to be quite insightful, to the point, jargon-free, and applicable to my work challenges with my teams and executive management. I particularly found the examples of 'world class' bellboys, room cleaners, nurses, restaurant servers and other professionals to be both endearing and very effective. The examples from Southwest Airlines were expected, but nevertheless nice to re-read.

Some of my favorite lines (paraphrased) from the book?
1. Don't promote people to their level of incompetence
2. Create heroes at every level of the organization
3. Good nurses pause before that jab and say "Honey, this will hurt initially, but will be ok soon" not "Honey, this wont hurt a bit"!
4. Hire for talent, manage by outcomes, and get out of the way
5. The road to hell is paved with good intentions :)

Loved It!.......2007-05-14

I loved this book on tape -- I had a long trip so thought the book on tape was the way to go and wasn't dissappointed. I am not looking to be in management, so I was a little wary. I found the book to be insightful, helpful and couldn't wait for the next book. Having Marcus Buckingham read the book was an added bonus.

Great Management Book!.......2007-04-12

This was my first introduction to Marcus Buckingham
out side of meeting him at a event. I will say a job
well done. It's a excellent read if you are in any
management position or run any type of organization.

The concepts inside this are EXCELLENT! I especially
enjoyed the parts inside the book where they discuss
how they fit people into the right roles. Also, how
they talk about hiring for talent not experience.

Matt Bacak
Author of The Ultimate Lead Generation Plan
and Secrets of the Internet Millionaire Mind

Rich Dad's Guide to Investing: What the Rich Invest in, That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Average customer rating:

Make Kiyosaki Rich and Yourself a Little Poorer
Interesting read
Rich Dad's Guide to Investing is EXCELLENT! A MUST HAVE!
Worst Book I Almost Read
Evidence-based decision-making applies to personal investing

Rich Dad's Guide to Investing: What the Rich Invest in, That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!
Robert T. Kiyosaki , and Sharon L. Lechter
Manufacturer: Business Plus
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Rich Dad's Advisors®: The ABC's of Real Estate Investing: The Secrets of Finding Hidden Profits Most Investors Miss (Rich Dad's Advisors)
Own Your Own Corporation: Why the Rich Own Their Own Companies and Everyone Else Works for Them (Rich Dad's Advisors)
Rich Dad's Retire Young, Retire Rich

ASIN: 0446677469

Amazon.com

The rich are different from the rest of us, if for no other reason than U.S. tax and securities laws allow them to invest in ways that keep us from catching up to them. That's why 90 percent of all corporate shares of stock are owned by 10 percent of the people. Kiyosaki believes it's possible for anyone to move up into that 10 percent, but it takes a different view of investing than most people have: it takes a plan to be a successful investor. And a plan is more than simply buying and selling, or collecting "assets" that bring in no cash and are thus more akin to liabilities. The way most people invest, "they might as well be pushing a wheelbarrow in a circle," he writes. A plan is "mechanical, automatic, and boring," a formula for success that has worked historically for most of those who've used it. Kiyosaki's "rich dad" (actually, the father of his best friend) tells him the simplest analogy is the game Monopoly: buy four green houses, trade them for one red hotel, and repeat until you become rich.

The overall message of Rich Dad's Guide to Investing is that this is an abundant world, full of opportunity for the sophisticated investor. However, it sometimes takes a while to find this point. Much of the book is told in dialogues between young Kiyosaki and his rich dad, and these conversations can ramble. There are rewards for the careful reader--for example, in the middle of a section on the basic rules of investing, Kiyosaki's rich dad compares investor education to toilet training: difficult at first but eventually automatic. But getting to these inspired metaphors means wading through a lot of repetitive dialogue. It's a bit ironic that someone who advocates investor discipline should show so little as a writer. But by the end of the book, even the rambling starts to make sense. By the hundredth time you read that the rich don't work for money, and that you don't need money to make money, both concepts start to make sense. It still looks difficult to apply these ideas, but Rich Dad's Guide to Investing certainly makes the case that they'll work for anyone bold and smart enough to practice them. --Lou Schuler

Book Description

With 16 priceless lessons that reduce risk through proper planning, this powerhouse guide removes the mystique from successful investing by helping readers switch from thinking poor to thinking rich.

Download Description

'Rich Dad's Guide to Investing' follows the New York Times bestsellers 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' and 'Rich Dad's CASHFLOW Quadrant'. Most of us know that the best investments never make it to market. This book discusses what the rich invest in that the poor and middle class do not. What follows is an insider's look into the world of investing, how the rich find the best investments, and how you can too. Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter show . . .· Rich Dad's basic rules of investing · How to reduce your investment risk · Rich Dad's 10 Investor Controls · How to convert your earned income into passive and portfolio income · How you can be the ultimate investor!

Customer Reviews:

Make Kiyosaki Rich and Yourself a Little Poorer.......2007-06-30

Make Kiyosaki Rich and Yourself a Little Poorer by buying this book. It amazes me how people buy the dream of becoming rich, yet make themselves poor. Kiyosaki certainly takes advantage of this by catering to greed and desire.

Case point: you are reading this book because you are poor. People rich in money and knowledge do not buy his junk.

Interesting read.......2007-05-22

Pros:
- easy to read
- keeps you interested
- you find some good info here and there

Cons:
- too vague about the subject
- repetitive
- too situational to US market

Fine read for a holliday.

Rich Dad's Guide to Investing is EXCELLENT! A MUST HAVE!.......2007-05-22

If you are wanting to find financial freedom, independance, would like to get rich, or just want to be educated on how to manage you finances, this book is for you.

I buy the whole series on cd,and you can fly through them and take notes. It is much easier to learn from the audio than to try to read a huge, long book. I listened to all of these books so far during car trips and during the drive to work. A great way to fill waisted time.

Worst Book I Almost Read.......2007-05-14

This book is terrible. I got halfway through, about 200 pages, and realized it was going absolutely nowhere. It reads like a bad infomercial, jammed with financial fortune cookies, that gives you absolutely no advice and no help. You'll get as much out of watching a Tom Vu half-hour as reading this mess. I keep waiting for a point, the nuts and bolts of investing (as the title might suggest), but none of that is here.

Kiyosaki is one of those typical rich guys who earned his wealth in one of two ways: 1) he got lucky and cashed in on real estate at the right time, or 2) he sold copies of a really bad book to people, promising to make them rich. In either case, it doesn't qualify him to provide these life lessons he keeps espousing.

And not only is the content bad (bordering on ridiculous), it is reads like it was written by a third grader. It's all these drawn-out conversations between him and his so-called rich dad. Seriously, it's like Miyagi in "The Karate Kid", only we never learn why we wax on or wax off or paint the fence.

Case in point: he emphasizes making a plan. A plan is very important, says he, and I agree. But I summed that up in two sentences and it takes him around 10 pages. And then he doesn't give any specifics about what should be IN the plan. Just have one or you'll remain poor. Thanks for the help. AHA!!! So that's what's been holding us poor minions back!!

After reading page-after-page and going nowhere, I started skipping large sections. Then I realized I could skip the whole book. I recommend you do the same. I can guarantee you will not get rich by reading this or any of his other books - I bet he won't guarantee the opposite.

Evidence-based decision-making applies to personal investing.......2007-05-04

"I always remember my rich dad saying, 'I have so much money because I was willing to make more mistakes than most people and learn from them. Most people have not made enough mistakes or continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.'" As I commented in Hard Facts, Dangerous Truths, in the Business Development section of this resource library, evidence-based decision-making is the key difference between succeful leaders and others. The same applies to individual investors and business owners. Study the facts, and hire people to also do that for you, and you can make better decisions. The rich, according to Kiyosaki, invest based on facts, not based on wishful thinking or based on fears and biases of family and friends. I like the writings of Kiyosaki because they are simple lessons wrapped in simple stories, and they cause me to think of my own decision-making. This principle is behind my reviews of instant wealth systems at civilsocietyblog at seedwiki.

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

Average customer rating:

Zen and the art of small business
Helpful, but no magic bullet
How to overcome doing everything
If you're a small business owner, this is your manual
The McDonalds of the Future

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
Michael E. Gerber
Manufacturer: Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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How To Make Your Business Run Without You

Accessories:

Business Plan Pro 4.0
eMerchant pro

ASIN: 0887307280

Book Description

In this first new and totally revised edition of the 150,000-copy underground bestseller, The E-Myth, Michael Gerber dispels the myths surrounding starting your own business and shows how commonplace assumptions can get in the way of running a business. He walks you through the steps in the life of a business from entrepreneurial infancy, through adolescent growing pains, to the mature entrepreneurial perspective, the guiding light of all businesses that succeed. He then shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business — whether or not it is a franchise. Finally, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in. your business. After you have read The E-Myth Revisited, you will truly be able to grow your business in a predictable and productive way.

Customer Reviews:

Zen and the art of small business.......2007-06-29

"The e-Myth Revisited" is an entertaining, well-written book that provides Gerber's philosophy on why 80% of small businesses fail and what can be done to prevent that.

It is presented in three parts. Part I serves to convince the reader that just because they are a great technician, it does not mean they will be a great owner of a business that does technical work. In essence, every small business must either grow or die, and for the owner, "your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth" not necessarily work in the business.

Part II seeks to convince the reader that the business Business Format Franchise is the optimal model for a small business. With this concept, the product of the business is the business itself, and the owner should build his business as if he will franchise it.

Part III gets down to some blocking and tackling of founding and constructing the business. This is an excellent little section that communicates a lot in a short space about operational, management, and marketing strategies. The questions raised in sections "Your Primary Aim" and "Your Strategic Objectives" are worth posing when considering any vocation, not just running a small businesses. The concept of "The Game" is very insightful, and it is applicable to both small business and corporate managers.

This isn't your typical business advice book. A consulting session with Sarah, owner of All About Pies, runs through the text, providing a forum for Gerber to give his advice in a personal fashion (and to exhibit an apparent flare for drama). The pages are sprinkled with references to classical literature, and there is a mid-book confession Gerber's exotic lifestyle, career choices and the road he took to become who he is now. And then there is Gerber's philosophical approach:
- He says "Your business is nothing more than a distinct reflection of who you are".
- He states small business has a higher calling than just business, and provides a Game to address the "Something is missing in most of our lives.... Part of what's missing is purpose. Values. Worthwhile standards against which our lives can be measured. Part of what's missing is a Game Worth Playing." Elsewhere, he says "A small business is a place that responds instantly to any action we take. A place where we can practice implementing ideas in a way that changes lives."
- He compares a small business to a dojo, or our practice hall, to wrestle with ourselves outside our comfort zone.
- He advises us to be wary of the comfort zone, saying "Your Comfort Zone has seized you before... and it can seize you again, when you're least prepared for it, because it knows what it means to you. Because it knows how much you want to be comfortable. Because it knows what price you are willing to pay for the comfort of being in control. The ultimate price, your life.... Comfort makes cowards of us all."

As far as the intended audience, in the first line of his Introduction, Gerber states "If you own a small business, or if you want to own a small business, this book was written for you". This is very true, with two caveats: it offers little insight on how to determine what type of business to start, and secondly, there are nuggets of wisdom in here for corporate mid-level or line managers too.

Although I was slightly put-off by long-winded digressions and melodrama, I still have to strongly recommend "The E-Myth" to its target audience.

Helpful, but no magic bullet.......2007-06-11

Entrepreneurs and people thinking about becoming entrepreneurs ought to read this book to gain perspective, not to find a magic bullet solution. Gerber thinks all small businesses should operate with a franchise mentality; that is, basing the business on repeatable, profitable systems rather than on the personality of the owner.

This is fine as far as it goes, but when Gerber puts all these elements of process (strategy, management, hr, marketing, sales, etc.) into a series of one-size-fits-all formulas, I think he is overreaching. Depending on a company's product/service, personnel, market, and a slew of other factors, these formulas may need quite an overhaul to fit the company's needs. That said, the book is loaded with words of wisdom. A few examples--

"Adolescence begins at the point in the life of your business when you decide to get some help."

"To The Entrepreneur, the business is the product."

"It is literally impossible to produce a consistent result in a business that depends on extraordinary people. No business can do it for long. And no extraordinary business tries to!"

"Most companies organize around personalities rather than functions."

Some readers may discover a great deal about themselves as they read. Gerber says entrepreneurs have three mentalities--the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician. These mentalities are always in conflict, and the way in which the owner balances them determines the success or failure of the business. If E-Myth helps owners figure out how to achieve a better balance, that insight will go further towards building the business than all Gerber's systems put together.

How to overcome doing everything.......2007-06-09

I am starting my own business and this book has been an enlightenment for every step of the way. It taught me how to stop being another employee of my own business and become the administrator it needs. It is a must read for anyone that feels that they're own business is getting out of hand and they need more hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done out there.

If you're a small business owner, this is your manual.......2007-06-05

I can't say enough about this book. I've recommended it dozens of friends and have bought 5+ copies for my clients in the past month alone. Moreover, it's changed the way I approach my consulting practice.

The McDonalds of the Future.......2007-05-31

So you have a great business idea....so what! According to Michael Gerber, ideas are a dime a dozen. Unless you execute that idea in an effective way, its destined for headache, heartache, and bankruptcy. The McDonalds model is the focus of the book in inviting you, the reader, to not just say, "Hey, I can make great burgers, why don't I sell them for a profit." Rather say, "Hey, I can make great burgers, at a great price, with a flawless system, that anyone anywhere in the world can do and it will come out exactly the same...give or take a pickle or two." Now you have a great company that is destined for success! Look out McDonalds of the world, here comes competition.

You Want Me to do What? An Illustrated Book on the Joys of Fellatio: Explicit Techniques

Average customer rating:

Oral Instruction
Bob & Diane Say:
Worth the Time
Sure, it's giving! But equality comes elsewhere!
Great Information, Poor Presentation.

You Want Me to do What? An Illustrated Book on the Joys of Fellatio: Explicit Techniques
Taylor
Manufacturer: Taylor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Sex | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

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Tickle His Pickle: Your Hands-On Guide to Penis Pleasing
302 Advanced Techniques for Driving a Man Wild in Bed: The New Book by the Bestselling Author of 203 Ways to Drive a Man Wild in Bed

ASIN: 0967330602

Book Description

"You Want Me To Do What"? is an illustrated book in which the author is a woman who energetically describes the fine art of fellatio. Whatever you choose to call it, "fellatio," "oral sex," "blow job," or "giving head," performing oral sex on a man is a skill that's well worth refining. Having one's genitals lovingly attended to by a learned mouth feels incredible and is an expression of intimacy and trust.

Filled between the pages of this book are informative sex facts, easy to learn instructions and it also has a humorous and playful side to it. Learn about and try out the 25 thrilling and erotic techniques, such as "Deep Throat", "69", "Grooving", "Tastes", "Head Twist", "Rippling", "Jail Break", etc. along with 115 instructional and alluring photos to help improve your odds of providing a truly great blow job every time. Tastefully written for both the beginner as well as the experienced, the book teaches an uninhibited and creative approach in giving the "Blow Job."

Customer Reviews:

Oral Instruction.......2007-06-19

Not bad information. Informative and instructional. There were some tidbits of information which i was able to use and, there were some useful tidbits of information that I could have shared/added. I was hoping there would be more useful information for me that wasn't already at my fingertips. However, for the most part, this book is well written, well defined, great visuals and entertaining as well as educational.

Bob & Diane Say: .......2007-04-11

This book is, in a word, ABSOLUTELY GREAT!!! SO BUY IT NOW!! It's written by a woman who obviously loves fellatio to the bottom of her soul, and who has developed superlative and awesome technique -- making her a true Grand Master of Fellatio!! Truly mind blowing techniques to add to your oral repretoire! In terms of substantive tips, it beats other books on this subject hands down. It is shorn of nonessential details and distills to essence the art of great fellatio -- and thus gets straight to the point. It makes us want to write a similar book on mind blowing cunnilingus -- so let's find a publisher.

Worth the Time.......2006-06-06

I found this read to be somewhat informative prose wise, entertaining & very informative visually. Ms Taylor does a great job of relaxing the reader, let's face it, many women find giving oral sex repulsive. I know because I do sexual counseling. Having said that, I found a lot of her info a tad boring or repetitive, probably because I have read "Blowing Him Away", "Going Down","The Ultimate Guide To Fellatio" etc. etc.
The fun title definitely caught my eye, & if you are a novice, married 20 years or just plain curious, this is a MUST read! Every woman having sex with a man should know this info & be comfortable performing fellatio, which can be VERY sexually exciting for women!
Yes ladies, you can get extremely aroused with the right mindset & knowledge. This is where I think Ms. Taylor's book has the most importance.She delves into:
1)mental preparation
2)making it fun ie; poprocks
3)giving some tasteful (no pun intended) photos on how to achieve it all, mentally & physically.
Women are, for the most part, taught, "only bad girls do that" or they hear how awful it is from their peers or sisters. We are given thousands of subliminal messages that sex is
a) dirty, especially penises (how many penises do you see in R rated movies?)
b) messy,
c) inconvenient, but most of all....
d) a natural thing. Therefore we don't feel it necessary to read a book on sex, I mean, It's "natural" right? GO READ THIS BOOK & learn about good sex. Let me end by adding, one of the later photos shows the woman lying down, head back & the penis entering from above (deep throating). This excellent technique originated from Linda Lovelace & no,not all women who go down, deep throat, you do what is comfortable but don't limit yourself either. Regarding swallowing...99% of the time he won't even know whether you did or didn't, he is too absorbed into the wonderful orgasm you have given him (keep a towel handy). MY fun tip of the day, (I can't recall if this was in the book) get a hot cup of tea or coffee, swish it in your mouth a few seconds & drive him crazy, several times. Have fun ladies, I mean that....& you will after reading this book.

Sure, it's giving! But equality comes elsewhere!.......2005-11-16

I had already reviewed a few books on fellatio - but the cute title of this text really caught my eye. "You Want Me To Do What?" It's not how I feel. But in these "I'll-do-you-if-you-do-me" times, the idea of giving oral sex might seem to be a little one-sided. However, when one really gets deeper into it (or takes it a little deeper), one soon discovers that there are a lot of other satisfactions to be had from performing this most loving of acts, (mainly emotional).

The book follows a very logical progression, starting off first with mental preparation ("Why do this?"), some definitions (like the "gag reflex"), and a recap of male anatomy (the most useful landmark being what the author calls the "Taylor Spot," after herself, which is the area on the underside of his organ, just below the head, which is where a man is most sensitive).

[...] On that score, the large page size and simple layout does give it some resemblance to a bound college thesis. This just means, unfortunately, that the text is too large to carry around in your purse - in case you forget what you're supposed to do. But there's another reason you might not want to read this book out in public - and that's because of the pictures.

Compared to the other works I've read, the most refreshing - and titillating -- aspect of this book is the fact that it is replete with PHOTOS! The images are strictly black & white and almost clinical in their matter-of-fact presentation. But they are certainly much more effective in communicating exactly what it is one is supposed to do. There's an erect phallus in about 90% of the photos (or a dildo that looks just like one) that is either being licked, kissed, and sucked, and then massaged by hands and between breasts! There's never more than at most an inch of penetration, so the photos are just a tease. But for those of you more apprehensive, seeing another woman's lips lovingly caressing and encircling the tip of a man's tool can certainly be very reassuring.

The author spends a fair amount of time sharing some external techniques, which she likes to give cute names. "Grooving," "The No Handed Catch," "Teasing the Taylor Spot," "Peek-a-Boo," and "Rippling," to name just the biggies.

As a hint for greater penetration, the author suggests letting him slide along the roof of your mouth as he goes deeper which will help to avoid the gag reflex. For fun, there's a humorous photo where the head - and the tongue beneath it - are both completely covered with Pop Rocks (carbonated candy) which is the author's favorite treat. There's even an illustrated section on how to use your mouth - to fit him with a condom (which is probably a good skill to know if I should ever decide to become a prostitute!).

In most of the photos, the woman's face is either upright (taking it from the front), or horizontal (coming down at it from above). The most daring view comes towards the book's end - when her face is leaning back - and her subject is approaching from above and behind her. This posture positions her mouth and throat more in a line, and the technique she's demonstrating, of course - is deep throating!

There are other postures in which to do this, but this is the only one featured in this book. Even so, I think many women might still find this dramatization to be very helpful. What's important here to understand is that the mouth and throat are normally at right angles to each other. In this position, the appendage can't go any further than the back of the mouth. Ladies, if you don't lay your head back - trying to take him any deeper will only make you choke! Trust me!

The section on swallowing is woefully brief. Taylor basically leaves it up to each woman to decide for herself what to do! As an alternative, she suggests having him finish across your face (which is shown in an accompanying photo). I personally found the thought of this to be hugely degrading. It's also missing out on a great emotional opportunity. Ask any man and he'll tell you that nothing says "I love you" more than swallowing - while not doing so, unfortunately, probably says just the opposite!

One of the biggest advantages of oral sex, which the author just touches upon, is its convenience. When women always insist upon having an orgasm every time he does (as female equality has told us we should), then sex, unfortunately, can sometimes loose its spontaneity. For me, a better type of equality for women (than tit-for-tat orgasms) would be to allow ourselves to be a little bisexual instead! Speaking from experience, nothing is more emotionally and physically enthralling - than to spend some time with another woman! It is, of course - why men love us so much!

To conclude, if you're looking for a light-hearted and informative guide to performing oral sex on your man, Taylor's "You Want Me To Do What?" might really hit the spot - without getting you all choked up! I highly recommend it!

Great Information, Poor Presentation........2005-06-30

This book was written and published by Taylor. Mind you the woman knows a great deal about fellatio and the book is highly informative if you can get past the fact that this book lacks a certain amount of eye candy I've become accustomed to. How do I begin: the cover, the numerous photos that are far from publishing quality, the layout of the book, and then there is the writing. All of which is distracting to a very informative book on one of my favorite acts.

Taylor covers several wonderful things in this book but I was distracted by the delivery. Are looks important? When it comes to a book, it is to me. The message is good but if I can't concentrate due to the poor quality of the book what's the point? I just think this book had so much potential.

All that said, there is great stuff in this book that is good. My favorite is putting a condom on with just my mouth. Taylor pretty much covers everything from deep throating to popping candy all with her own brand of wit and slang. It's a great education but the delivery could use some work.

I gave this book three stars for the information it contains but couldn't give it any more.

girldiver:)

The Strategy Paradox: Why committing to success leads to failure (and what to do about it)

Average customer rating:

how to build a business on sheer terminology
One of the most important strategy books of the decade
Refreshing insights on managing focus vs. flexibility
I will read it again, but on first read not the first or best book on strategy
Strategy Gets New Life

The Strategy Paradox: Why committing to success leads to failure (and what to do about it)
Michael E. Raynor
Manufacturer: Currency
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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

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

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ASIN: 0385516223
Release Date: 2007-02-20

Book Description

A compelling vision. Bold leadership. Decisive action. Unfortunately, these prerequisites of success are almost always the ingredients of failure, too. In fact, most managers seeking to maximize their chances for glory are often unwittingly setting themselves up for ruin. The sad truth is that most companies have left their futures almost entirely to chance, and don’t even realize it. The reason? Managers feel they must make choices with far-reaching consequences today, but must base those choices on assumptions about a future they cannot predict. It is this collision between commitment and uncertainty that creates THE STRATEGY PARADOX.

This paradox sets up a ubiquitous but little-understood tradeoff. Because managers feel they must base their strategies on assumptions about an unknown future, the more ambitious of them hope their guesses will be right – or that they can somehow adapt to the turbulence that will arise. In fact, only a small number of lucky daredevils prosper, while many more unfortunate, but no less capable managers find themselves at the helms of sinking ships. Realizing this, even if only intuitively, most managers shy away from the bold commitments that success seems to demand, choosing instead timid, unremarkable strategies, sacrificing any chance at greatness for a better chance at mere survival.

Michael E. Raynor, coauthor of the bestselling The Innovator's Solution, explains how leaders can break this tradeoff and achieve results historically reserved for the fortunate few even as they reduce the risks they must accept in the pursuit of success. In the cutthroat world of competitive strategy, this is as close as you can come to getting something for nothing.

Drawing on leading-edge scholarship and extensive original research, Raynor’s revolutionary principle of Requisite Uncertainty yields a clutch of critical, counter-intuitive findings. Among them:

-- The Board should not evaluate the CEO based on the company’s performance, but instead on the firm’s strategic risk profile
-- The CEO should not drive results, but manage uncertainty
-- Business unit leaders should not focus on execution, but on making strategic choices
-- Line managers should not worry about strategic risk, but devote themselves to delivering on commitments

With detailed case studies of success and failure at Sony, Microsoft, Vivendi Universal, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T and other major companies in industries from financial services to energy, Raynor presents a concrete framework for strategic action that allows companies to seize today’s opportunities while simultaneously preparing for tomorrow’s promise.

Customer Reviews:

how to build a business on sheer terminology.......2007-06-29

One star is far far far too much--I give this book a minus 3 stars--a serious contender for the worst business book ever written. This book is truly one of the most important strategy books of the decade--in the robust sense that "strategy" books as a category are a joke.

Remember the names of those who wrote, above, glowing reviews of this book--their extremely poor judgement probably comes from much practice developing such poor habits of thought at work in their various firms--sell those stocks short! The small lies that these other reviewers wrote (Kawasaki's sounds so sincere, for example) are "harmless" in "modern business", afterall what is the harm of a little lie--lying is a principal tool of business including venture capital, is it not? Why not tell a tiny little lie or two, every day, to keep the ability in tact in case your business needs it? (For dunderheads reading this review, I am being sarcastic here).

The author of this book writes like the poorer 1/5th of my master's students. His brain is trite. His writing is confused. He bandies about words like options, not only without definition, but with ever increasing fogginess of implication, reference, and import. If he has a Ph.D. his doctoral advisor must have been third rate--I have never graduated a student who writes like this book is written. I send such students, preferably to other professors, and if that fails, I send them back to re-do 2 years of comprehensive reading for their comprehensive reading exam, which qualifies them for then setting up a committee to hear their Ph.D dissertation proposal.

A charitable view of this book would hold that its focus on the dilemma that extremely conservative and extremely bold firms outperform extremely moderate firms--if and only when they still exist, which is not probable given their extreme positions--is of worth, but this was first published over 100 years ago, and has been commonsense since at least the 1930s. Any book the primary dilemma of which was timely 70 years ago is, well, how shall I say, un-needed. The author, as is usual with naive writers, is much better at describing his problem than at presenting any decent solution to it--his "option" solution is nowhere defined, completely and deliberatelly kept foggy, and childish everywhere it is used in the text.

Strategy is a social status play word, popular among Americans, who need big sounding words to worship and to justify fawning over celebrities and "leaders". Europeans and East Asians tend to laugh out loud whenever exposed to American worship of Strategy. Interestingly, the worst public speaker in the history of the world, a certain professor at Harvard, in her history of work correctly pointed out how status play words like "strategy" were picked up in the first US business schools to pretend to "educate" daddy's lazy female-genitalia-chasing son, so he could rule over more competent people who had grown up with dad as dad built the business. McKinsey and BCG brochures to this day, read funny--they are pitched at brainless idiots needing assurance that CEO-ness truly is outsourced--there outside the brain of the inheritor for his use whenever his talent for stupidity threatens to accelerate his loss of daddy's billions.

Once you subtract the worship out of words like Strategy, and once you subtract the American fawning over celebrity leaders out of it, you are left with "choices" to be made by "thousands of people" and very very few leaders do much about that, pretending instead that they "alone" make decisions (they have to appear leaderly a little to get rip off compensation from their fawning board compensation committee).

People who buy books on strategy see themselves, like the prows of ships, cutting through the riff raff "little people" of life, and doing heroic cognitive things--representing Western Civilization as its sheer thought-ness crushes cultures, feelings, incomes, around the world. [This is a paraphrase of a poem by William Carlos Williams, "the Yatchs" I think it is titled.]

The author of this book, believe it or not, has been taken up with the whole American fawning culture of strategy and he blindly repeats, literally on every single page of the book, adolescent "strategy worship" acts of obeisance to, what is, afterall, his god (Descarte running things well due to the superiority of his intellect to mere humans = a dream of all pompous little male professors throughout history).

If you are interested in strategy then you are basically a polluting contaminant of any business you enfilth. If you are interested in this book you are incapable of spotting third rate cognitive processes in action. If you are interested in this review, god help us all!

When publishers worship "popular" anythings, or the Nicole Richie semblances of "popular anythings" you and I end up with books like this. The editors of this book should go back to grad school and get a decent education--one sufficient to prevent selling buzzwords as if that were thought.

One star is far far far too much. I give this book a minus 3 stars--a serious contender for the worst book on business ever written.

One of the most important strategy books of the decade.......2007-06-26

"The Strategy Paradox" is one of the most interesting books on strategy for about 10 years. I have worked with strategy and planning issues in a managerial role with large international companies and as a consultant. I plow through reams of books every year. Most of them disappointing with the occasional nugget hidden in an overflow of business speak muzak. Many have tales about how the CEO made an early commitment to what turned out to be a successful strategy. Rarely a word about the corpses, of failed commitments, in the ditches along the road.

In "The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning" Mintzberg virtually demolished the concept of strategic planning, stating that strategic thought, does not necessarily occur in a planning process. He also stated that most CEO stories on how they and their company successfully achieved their strategies are flawed as they are written with hindsight and does not show how strategic thought developed.

Raynors book ain't your standard recipe book on how to create instant strategies. For those who seek instant gratification on how to find the great strategy and how to commit and persevere, this is not the right book.

Edison is quoted as saying "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work.". Unfortunately he is right. Raynors main point is how to cope with uncertainty and the multitude of possible outcomes. Instead of stubbornly committing to one set of strategies, win or lose, he suggests working more by handling a portfolio of strategic options.

After Shell's success with scenario planning in the 70's many have tried to emulate the method. Several failed as they picked the scenario that they liked best and did not bother about the rest. Raynor positions options theory as what to do when you have done the scenarios. Shell used scenarios to build general awareness among managers about multiple future directions. Raynor suggests building strategies around each scenario and treating them as options to "cash in", as appropriate futures emerges.

I often think that "uncertainty" seems like a dirty word in our hero worship, macho, management culture. Strong commitment and focus on "execution" is what counts. Raynor suggests that the higher corporate management have to cope with uncertainty in time perspectives of 5-20 years. It is their job to make sure that the company is viable in that time frame.

Handling long time uncertainty does in no way clash with commitment in time frames shorter than 3-5 years. Raynor points out that if each level in the organization does their work, then divisions and operational units will have more flexibility in how to succeed with their commitments than if corporate HQ keep detailed control all the time.

Raynor attempts to move "uncertainty" from something abhorrent to being what corporate management actually should be working with. He gives a framework for how to position useful methods in doing this. His book is definitely one of my best reads for a long time.

Refreshing insights on managing focus vs. flexibility.......2007-06-18

Most senior managers have engaged in the corporate strategy creation process at one time or another in their career. The experiences are often less than satisfying as apparently well thought out plans are often derailed by events that were unanticipated or discounted. The difficulty that companies face in developing an ongoing process that creates a succession of insightful strategies is reflected in the mediocre statistics of company performance. (See 'Blueprint to a Billion' by David G Thompson for example.)

Raynor revisits tools that we have been exposed to in the past--scenario planning and real options--and then suggests a more effective way to apply these tools. First, he notes that commitment to a clear strategic direction is essential for a company to maintain competitive focus. That is why it is hard, for example, to get many groups responsible for technology roadmaps for infrastructure and service delivery excited about projections beyond 18 to 24 months. They want to be aware of potential surprises that might arise in the next 3 to 10 years, but they don't really want to spend any time or money to obtain that awareness. Given that the future is by nature evermore unpredictable as the time horizon extends, those potential disruptors are only possibilities. Spending more than a very minimal amount to maintain an ongoing scan of these potential disruptors is generally outside the remit of most well-managed operational budgets. The significant downside of this tension between running a well-managed operation and dealing with accelerating changes in the competitive marketplace is that a company will tend to pick a more conservative strategy which results in less differentiation from competitors.

This tendency reminds me of swarm behaviors observed in nature when a school of herring, for example, is attacked by tuna. The herring appear to follow a few simple rules to reduce their risk of being eaten. First, they try to stay close to their neighbor but not too close. Second, they try to move towards the center of the chaotic "tornado-like" vortex of fish that forms. Managers are biased to pick strategies in the same herd-like fashion. This tendency is not surprising because companies are similarly biased to punish competitive shortfalls, even if only by reputation, so unless managers are brain-wired to live on the edge, they will naturally steer to the strategy map's conservative middle.

Raynor believes the responsibility for scenario planning and creating real options to generate strategic flexibility falls on the Board of Directors and the CEO. That's because operating divisions must limit how much they invest in creating strategic flexibility (as opposed to contingency flexibility). The real options that the BOD and Corporate Office cultivate are either discarded, if not needed as the future unfolds, or exercised, if it becomes clear that some division of the company needs to change their strategy and the change should include exercising an available real option. Lacking a real option makes it difficult to implement a strategic readjustment, while having an option makes it easier for the company to successfully adapt to the new environment.

Real options are typically created by forming partnerships, joint ventures, or limited investment in new companies. Each has its merits and shortcomings as described in the book.

Raynor uses examples from Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Bell Canada Enterprises, Sony, and Vivendi to show how these companies have successfully used (consciously or intuitively in the cases of J&J, Microsoft, and BCE) strategic flexibility. Unsuccessful examples include Vivendi and Sony. Vivendi's CEO gambled on one vision of the future that never came to pass. Sony, on the other had, developed perfectly good strategies but not enough flexibility (Betamax, Minidisc, and now, maybe the PlayStation 3. Also note that some other reviewers have a different interpretation of the Sony Betamax story.).

He also details Alliant Energy's use of strategic flexibility. He summarizes their formation of a five axis scenario space and how to reduce the complexity of analyzing the 32 scenarios that defines. This is particularly informative for those of us who have been encouraged to distill scenarios down to two axes and four quadrants of potential futures simply to reduce the complexity of analysis. This has always left me (and others I'm sure) feeling that the baby was probably tossed in bathwater of simplification. So it's no surprise that many scenario exercises are discounted.

The example companies Raynor discusses typically have more than one operating division. As a result, the scenarios and real options approach is more understandable because it benefits from leverage from both synergies across divisions where appropriate and the likely existence of a Corporate Venture Capital group that can develop investments and relationships to cultivate real options.

How this approach is used in smaller single operating unit companies and startups is less clear. The smaller the company, the more all resources are focused on a current strategy and tactical contingencies. Fewer resources (probably none) are available to develop real options. As Christensen and Raynor note in 'The Innovator's Solution', these smaller companies must have flexibility to find where the profits lie before they scale up operations. The primary solution for the smaller companies, especially entrepreneurial startups, is to cultivate very tight relationships with current and potential customers and to understand "the jobs they hire your product to do," as opposed to making contingent new investments or pursuing partnerships and alliances before identifying successful profit strategies. For the small company, I believe that, after profit pools are identified, scenario planning with real options thinking should be biased towards creating a perspective from a big brother partner's or alliance partner's point of view. This will help filter out those relationships that are more likely to meet the expectations of both companies.

In short, if you seek to improve your strategic planning with scenario thinking and real options so you can better allocate risk and reward, you will find Raynor's book offers new insights worth exploring.

I will read it again, but on first read not the first or best book on strategy.......2007-06-05

I bought Mr. Raynor's book at the airport, paying a premium because I had a few hours of uninterrupted time to devote to understanding the strategy paradox. I found Mr. Raynor's book interesting in that it took some already known concepts, such as uncertainty, strategic planning, and scenarios and sought to present them in a new light and with a new research based foundation.

Mr. Raynor attempts to brand the term "strategy paradox" repeatedly reminding the reader that this is the fact that the same behaviors that characterize a company's success also maximize its probability of failure. So to a lay man, it seems that you are in Mr. Raynor's opinion the subject of the fates, the best laid plans of mice and men and all that. Raynor however, goes on to say that its not fate or luck, but rather the management of Requisite Uncertainly -- an academic sounding term for the face that different levels of an organization address different levels of the unknown. OK, got that but unfortunately did not get much more than that.

What I took away from my first read of the book, which took more than a few plane rides, was three main ideas -- frankly none of which are earth shattering.

1) Making the wrong commitments, no matter how well thought through does not guarantee success

2) Requisite Uncertainty -- that there should be a clear delineation between the actions of senior executives, operating managers and line staff

3) Scenarios and real options provide a way to manage requisite uncertainty and create strategic flexibility.

I am sure that there is a deeper argument in here, but it does not come out in this book. Sorry but these are all ideas that have been in the marketplace for some time and applied to strategy as well. Raynor's comparison of BCE with Vivendi basically leaves the reader with the notion that you do not invest in core assets just buy options and build joint ventures. There are contravening cases I am sure where people who only half-committed were overwhelmed by competitors who committed early. It would have been good to present those counter-cases.

There are some bright spots in the book. The discussion of the difference between operating and strategic contingency were refreshing as well as the discussion the survivor bias in all business books.

The use of the case studies is unfortunately weak to the reader. They often describe the situation rather than being an analysis of a prescriptive application of the ideas in the book. The Sony case is an example and a case that many have used to explain many different aspects and ideas of strategy. I had hoped that in using such an overused case, Mr. Raynor would have shed some new light and insight on the situation.

Frankly I was expecting more from someone who has a close working relationship with Clayton Christensen. The book reads more like a popularization of his doctoral dissertation than a business book. That's not intrinsically wrong; it's just that it means that the ideas are presented in an academic rather than a practitioner format.

Given all the heat that I can see from the other reviews, I am going out on a limb here. There must be some good ideas here as I respect Mr. Raynor and his affiliation with Mr. Christensen. So I will put the book down for a while and read it again in a month or two. If my opinion changes I will update the review.

Strategy Gets New Life.......2007-05-30

As a strategy consultant, I'm always on the look out for the next book to either recommend to my clients, or that they are likely to gravitate towards, to be prepared with my opinion when asked about the work. And since I have been a fan of Clay Christensen and disruption theory and was looking forward to see what Raynor would do on his own. Thanks goodness for a relaxing the long weekend so I could finally make the time for this.

Also, I have never written a review before. Since I really liked the book and there seemed to be few comments yet doing it justice, I figured I would cut my teeth on this one.

Generally, I have to agree with the HBR review -- he's a disruptive thinker in his own right: this is an approach to corporate strategy that is new, combining the merits of commitment-based strategy with the inescapable need for flexibility. I am looking forward to practically applying the core concepts on behalf of my clients.

The Strategy Paradox: Hidden in Plain Sight

Raynor begins by demonstrating what many of us have long suspected but weren't able to come out and say: when it comes to traditional strategic planning, the emperor has no clothes. Established frameworks -- from Ansoff to Porter to Hamel to, for that matter, Christensen, are premised on an ability to decide today what will be successful tomorrow. We're told again and again that the future will yield its secrets if only we're smart enough and our analysis is rigorous enough.

But prediction is a dark art at best: the data are always ambiguous. Personally, I've never seen a single path forward as clearly the best choice. This means that unfortunately, the most successful strategies are necessarily based on big commitments: it is fine to want to be "agile" and commit only once the data are clear, but the company that guesses right in the face of ambiguity will always outperform the "wait and see" approach of the adapative enterprise.

And so you have to commit big if you want to win big, but when you commit big you create the risk of losing big. That's the Strategy Paradox: the same strategic positions that hold out the promise of extreme success create the possibility of extreme failure.

Raynor demonstrates this both anecdotally and with a truly extraordinary large-scale data set. Anecdotally, in Chapter 2 Raynor has a totally new take on Sony's Betamax and MiniDisc fiascos. The tendency is to look at strategic failures such as these and conclude that the perpetrators were just plain dumb. What Raynor shows is that the strategic choices made, at the time they were made, were perfectly reasonable. Better still, Raynor shows that the opposite choices -- the ones made by Matsuhshita (VHS) and Apple (iPod) respectively were also perfectly reasonable. And that's the point: the future is uncertain, but you have to commit if you want to win big. A "take-it-as-it-comes" approach might have avoided catastrophe, but at the cost of having any real hope of real success. The ultimate winners are determined by the outcomes of unpredictable future events -- in other words, luck.

Raynor then shows that this is not just a one-shot thing. In Chapter 3, drawing on fascinating survey data, he shows that companies with clear cost leadership or product differentiation strategic positions deliver higher average returns than firms that are "stuck in the middle". In other words, big commitments made extreme success much likelier. Now the bad news: those same "extreme" strategic positions have much higher frequency of bankruptcy. Raynor has identified true "strategic" uncertainty -- the risk attached the pursuit of a specific strategy. And it turns out that the better returns that come with commitment-based strategies come at the cost of a higher risk of failure. Raynor's Strategy Paradox is not just a theoretical proposition -- it is a general, empirical fact. I'm left to conclude that, as Raynor says, everything we know about strategy is true, but it's "dangerously incomplete". (I love the drama he infuses into my strategy discussions with clients and colleagues!)

So, there's a risk/return trade-off in strategy. Is this news? I think so: there is no strategy book before now that qualifies its advice on achieving greatness with the caveat that you're also increasing your chance of total failure. In fact, much of strategic thinking is based on the idea that higher returns are correlated with lower variance in returns, and so risk and return are inversely correlated. But these findings are polluted with survivor bias, something Raynor's data correct for, perhaps for the first time. By identifying and empirically substantiating the risk/return tradeoff in strategic planning, Raynor has made a material contribution to the field.

I was convinced that better prediction isn't the answer; if you're not, Raynor spends Chapter 5 talking about why we'll never be able to predict the future with the necessary accuracy, drawing heavily (and respectfully) on the work of N. N. Taleb and Stephen Wolfram in particular.

I was more sceptical of Raynor's claims that the "organizational adaptation" school didn't hold a useful answer, either, but I was largely won over, if only because, as Raynor points out, the adaptation school hasn't done a very good job of defining its own boundaries. In Chapter 4 Raynor begins to sketch out, for the first time, as far as I can tell, what those limits might be, and through this makes it clear that a better answer is needed.

Growth Options vs. Strategic Options

The commentary the book has received on this site doesn't seem to me to describe accurately the true nature of "Strategic Flexibility." Some have described it simply a "portfolio of alternatives" or a way to "invest small in uncertain ventures." This misses the point. Raynor is describing a way for different product groups or divisions in a company to make their own high-intensity commitments yet collectively face lower strategic uncertainty.

For example, in Chapter 7, MSFT in 1988, draws on Beinhocker (Origin of Wealth) but extends it. MSFT's portfolio was more than just different forays into the OS space: each division created capabilities that could be recombined to create a more effective OS strategy than was being explored by any given division. So, for instance, the company was exploring enterprise markets with Unix, consumer markets with Windows, and commercial markets with OS/2. This was not merely covering different bets; it was covering only those bets that could both survive on their own -- and so have growth option value -- and, depending on how the world turned out, be recombined to create a new strategy in the OS market -- and so have strategic option value.

This distinction, between growth options and strategic options, is a significant contribution to the real options field. Raynor's Chapter 7 discussion of BCE (a Canadian telecoms company), brought the difference into focus for me. Growth options are essentially attempts to "run away" from your core business. So, if you're Enron and you think pipelines are boring and in decline, you get into energy trading as a way to pull yourself up by your bootstraps get out of that business. Trading is simply a "growth option" -- an option on entirely new growth trajectories.

Strategic options, on the other hand, are new businesses that are created in order to potentially reinvent and extend your existing core business. BCE got into systems consulting, e-commerce, and media, but not to escape its core telecoms operations; rather, BCE diversified in order to keep open the possibility of reinvigorating the core. At the corporate level, BCE didn't commit to these new initiatives, taking partial equity stakes in a number of different companies that it could dial up or down as circumstances warranted. But at the operating division level, those firms were entirely committed to achieving their own success.

As different market conditions or technologies evolved, BCE would be able to "exercise" its "strategic options" and completely change the strategy of the core telecoms unit b