Ala Survey of Librarian Salaries 2003 (Ala Survey of Librarian Salaries)

Book Description

"This important book explores the fundamental reasons why our secondary schools look and work in the ways that they do, and synthesizes a substantial body of research in a highly readable form. It should be part of every secondary administrator’s bookshelf and every university’s preparation program."
Karen Seashore Louis, Professor and Director
Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement
College of Education and Human Development
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

A groundbreaking, research-based discussion on high school reform!

For too long, high school reform has been based on concepts and philosophies with no undergirding in solid research. Murphy and his colleagues have changed all that as they discuss how reform based on empirical evidence and a robust set of theories can create productive high schools for all students.

The authors focus on core technologies of learning and teaching, organizational systems, and the institutional linkages between schools and their environments. Using current research and case studies from successful schools, they show how to construct models of learning-driven school communities that encourage excellence. The analysis focuses on classroom dynamics of engaged learning and teaching and the necessary steps to create a personalized academic high school.

Key concepts cover:

Defining the learning imperative
Developing humanized and intellectual relationships for learning
Laying the groundwork for dynamic, adaptive change
Building linkages with home and family

The Productive High School offers a clear, concise understanding of what it will take to achieve meaningful learning. Practicing educators, parents, policymakers, researchers, and concerned citizens will find this a valuable and comprehensive resource of high school reform that works.

Customer Reviews:

Fundamentals.......2006-03-17

This book covers the fundamentals of negotiating between people. It helps the reader improve his communication with others, while doing it with respect.

Great Book.......2005-02-21

This book does a superb job of taking you down to the negotiation whether its on the phone or at the table accross the world. He offers incredible insights and puts them in the book in a down to earth manner that everyone is sure to benefit from.

This really should be a #1 best selling book. How many of us remember that when we negotiate that we should not tell the person we are negotiating what our deadline is? Or that when we are trying to get a discount for a service that we should always tell the person that they have a "reasonable rate" and perhaps we can get a special deal.

Let the person keep their self esteem and often times they may be willing to cut a good deal for you. Its easy reading and to the point. A great book that gets right down to the topic.

Helpful guide on negotiating to win..........2003-08-15

The author wastes on time getting to the point in this book. It's a quick and easy read, and even if you skim it, you'll still get the main points. I picked this book up and flipped through it and was hooked after the introduction. I recommend this to anyone who is in the process of any important decision that involves negotiations, especially if you're not a good negotiator to begin with...

Used this book with success!.......2003-01-10

Whenever I have some negotiation to do, I quickly re-read this book. It is well-written with straightforward explanations of the concepts. I've used this book with success while negotiating my job compensation, my mortgate, my car, and numerous other situations. Highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about negotiation quickly.

Couldn't even use my high-lighter!.......2002-01-04

I am a regular Joe Schome kind of guy. I have not read other negotiating books, so my opinion lacks comparison. I have read this book over the past two months, and I must say I have rarely come across books written this well.

In my opinion, this book teaches exactly what it's title truly says. I was sceptical at first, so I picked up the book to read an excerpt. Usually I will get bored very quickly, and put the book down, but with this book, I was immediately captured. In fact, when I read the book, I found that I couldn't even use my high-lighter, because every single sentence was packed with such unique and important information!

The information is concise, direct, meaningful, educational, and correct. I would say the tone is casually formal. Mr. Reilly draws on his years of experience as a lawyer, covering everything from tactics to strategy, including buyer's remorse, to team negotiating, to when not to negotiate.

I would even give this book as a gift to my worst enemy, just so he could understand when and when not to deadlock me in a negotiation. I highly recommend the book for absolutely anyone at any age, even teenagers.

Personally, I believe every interaction with another human being can be classified as a negotiation. Therefore, this book teaches us how to properly interact in a world where people are different. In my opinion, that skill is a must for everyone.

Book Description

Strategy execution has far more potential for value creation than does strategy formulation. This book offers a complete tool kit to help firms achieve world-class strategy execution status. It focuses on initiative management, aligning executive, operating, and support processes with market rhythms, the seven stages of business growth, and time-phasing initiatives with the competitive realities of the firm's environment. It also demonstrates how to track the ripple effects of change throughout the organization. By emphasizing market rhythm, which is four to five times faster than how often a firm's best customers buy (the buying cycle), this concept of strategy execution seeks to ensure that the processes of established firms will be freed from their ineffective, out-of-sync status. How? By showing how and why all executive, operating and support processes must become prioritized, aligned, linked and synchronized (PALS) with the firm's unique market rhythm. A culture of world-class execution cuts through the clutter, confusion, and wasted time more effectively than the complex change techniques being used in many firms today. Numerous exhibits portray tools that can be used by firms to develop world-class strategy execution prowess. A glossary of new terms and new definitions of familiar terms is included, along with a diagnostic survey that a firm can use to assess its current status regarding its world-class strategy execution abilities. The authors also provide a 10-S model of management imperatives that updates the McKinsey 7-S model from the 1980s. If a firm has been bogged down for too long in strategy formulation, now is the time to begin the execution phase--using this book as a starting point will give any organization the advantages it needs to launch this initiative successfully.

Book Description

This book offers a reassessment of the international monetary problems that led to the global economic crisis of the 1930s. It explores the connections between the gold standard--the framework regulating international monetary affairs until 1931--and the Great Depression that broke out in 1929. Eichengreen shows how economic policies, in conjunction with the imbalances created by World War I, gave rise to the global crisis of the 1930s. He demonstrates that the gold standard fundamentally constrained the economic policies that were pursued and that it was largely responsible for creating the unstable economic environment on which those policies acted. The book also provides a valuable perspective on the economic policies of the post-World War II period and their consequences.

Customer Reviews:

A Landmark Economics Study on the Economics of the Flawed Gold Standard.......2007-07-14

This is a landmark economics study on the effects of the disastrous gold standard in partly causing the Great Depression, along with the Federal Reserve contracting the money supply, related to the flawed gold standard. This book is intented for advanced economists and is probably not legible for most college-educated people.

Two other essential books on the subject are Essays on the Great Depression by Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve and America's top economist, and Lessons from the Great Depression (Lionel Robbins Lectures) by Peter Temin, one of the greatest economists of the Great Depression. Those books were also written for economists, although Bernanke's book can be read by average people if you skip around.

The average reader wanting to read about the gold standard in a way that a general reader can understand should read the Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States) by David Kennedy. Kennedy's writes thoroughly about the economics of the Great Depression, yet the Oxford History of the United States is designed for everyone to read.

Tries too hard to prove its Keynesian case.......2005-01-17

This book tries to prove the Gold Standard does not work. It should have considered the possibility from a monetarist point of view that the Gold Standard did not work because central bankers, rather than tens of thousands of gold-trading merchants, were controlling the flow of gold. As such, central bankers are prone to collusion and game theory takes over, rather than economic self-interest, which is the real reason IMO why the gold standard failed in the 1930s.

But it is a useful book to highlight the blow-by-blow account of the failure of the gold standard (i.e., fixed money supply) in the 1930s Great Depression (which itself was caused by central bankers), if you read between the lines.

For experts only........2002-02-25

This book would probably make a good textbook for a college course on international financial affairs, but for someone like myself who just wanted to know what the gold standard was, this book is like pulling teeth. Mr. Eichengreen's "Golden Fetters" just goes into too much detail. By page nine of the introduction I wished I hadn't bought the book, by page 30 I was ready to donate it to the local library. If you live and breathe the stock market or international finance, this book may be for you. I'll just wait for a good documentary on the subject on television.

A tremendous trip into la-la land.......2001-08-02

Barry Eichengreen's classic tale of financial hubris and mismanagement is almost ten years old. But it's still riveting. It's a broad-sweep introduction for generalists and financial buffs alike. And it's very well written too.

The book begins by describing the inner workings of the gold standard and how it evolved from its inception in the 1800s. This part may be a bit dry for generalists, but once underway all the terms become quite easy to understand. It's worth persevering since WW1changed the way the world worked. In particular, the after effects of the war made staying on gold much more difficult for countries experiencing persistent balance of payments deficits.

After that, Eichengreen goes on a tour of the interwar years and aims to show why the collapse of the gold standard and the plunge into depression had nothing to do with the US stock market and everything to do with rivalries and mismanagment on an international scale. The US crash was a symptom of an international crisis, not the cause.

All the classic powderkegs are there. The UK's mindless attempt to rejoin the gold standard at the overvalued, pre-war rate. Vindictive French domestic politics and the hyperinflations in continental Europe. Vindictive French attempts to humiliate the Germans over reparations. Bank runs in Germany and Austria. French and American attempts to bend the rules of the Gold Standard for their own national interests. Wild swings in capital flows from Europe to the US and back again. And the cataclysmic days of 1931 when the whole system collapsed under the weight of banking crises and currency contagion - in ways very similar to Asia in 1997.

After the crash, we get down to the Great Depression and who fared the best. This part is much shorter since it isn't as complicated. Basically, those countries that devalued quickly and went the free market route fared much better than those that didn't. Sweden was a star performer. The US can be found towards the back of the class. Dear old Blighty gets full marks for going solo, although more recent evidence shows this had more to do with throwing in the towel than playing with new ideas.

Strangely there's little mention of Japan. Nippon took a beating in the late 1920s while the yen remained fixed to gold. Once sterling devalued, the Japanese followed suit. The recovery was swift and full blooded. But the central bank forgot to stop the printing press once growth returned and ended up fighting hyperinflation in the late 1930s. So Eichengreen's line that giving up was the great panacea isn't quite as true as he'd have you believe.

All told, Golden Fetters is great. While it lacks facts and figures on banking problems and doesn't really provide convincing evidence on contagion, it works really well as a diary of contrasting fortunes in Europe and the US after the guns fell silent in 1918. If you like history then this is for you.

Excellent reading!.......2000-04-12

Eichengreen does it again. His easy-reading prose takes the reader through the monetary meanders of the post-WWI scenario, alternating historical narrative with clear, in-depth looks into economic theory and economic thought. The book features a comprehensive analysis of the intricacies of the interwar gold standard. The international conferences, the German hyperinflation, the roller-coaster of the Franc between 1924 and 1926 and the monetary determinants of the Great Depression are studied with extreme accuracy. This magnificient account will not disappoint either the academic reader or the learned non-specialist.

Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939

Average customer rating:

Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939
Barry Eichengreen
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OK9W8W

Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939 (NBER Series on Long-Term Factors in Economic Development)

Average customer rating:

Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939 (NBER Series on Long-Term Factors in Economic Development)
Barry Eichengreen
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OKPBFK

Book Description

Written expressly for on-the-go sales managers who don't have the time to wade through wordy prose or academic theory, this book is fast-paced and results-oriented. It contains scores of easy-to-implement strategies, checklists, and action plans for anyone who's managing a sales team. The book's wisdom is culled from the author's own experience as a top sales manager, as well as feedback from the thousands of managers who have participated in his training programs and seminars. This revised and updated edition is not only a guide to coaching and training sales reps in the skills they need, but it's also a handbook full of practical tools and motivational strategies to help reps generate activity and get business. It contains valuable information and insights on hiring and recruiting, effective field coaching skills, running effective sales meetings, and utilizing the most up-to-date technological resources without giving up the warm personal touch.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Quick Reference Guide.......2005-12-10

This is a short, inexpensive little reference guide for sales management. It covers a variety of different topics including the transition from sales to management, incentivizing sales teams, hiring superstars, coaching weaker players, and terminating non-producers.

The author is concise and the text is easy to read. It won't teach you to be a great manager, but it does make an excellent quick reference guide and it has quite a few interesting ideas for motivation and hiring.

Well worth the $12.99 list price.

Superstar sales manager's secrets - State of the Art Selling

Average customer rating:

Superstar sales manager's secrets - State of the Art Selling
Barry J. Farber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000SZ5XFY

Book Description

Convexity of sets in linear spaces, and concavity and convexity of functions, lie at the root of beautiful theoretical results that are at the same time extremely useful in the analysis and solution of optimization problems, including problems of either single objective or multiple objectives. Not all of these results rely necessarily on convexity and concavity; some of the results can guarantee that each local optimum is also a global optimum, giving these methods broader application to a wider class of problems. Hence, the focus of the first part of the book is concerned with several types of generalized convex sets and generalized concave functions. In addition to their applicability to nonconvex optimization, these convex sets and generalized concave functions are used in the book's second part, where decision-making and optimization problems under uncertainty are investigated.
Uncertainty in the problem data often cannot be avoided when dealing with practical problems. Errors occur in real-world data for a host of reasons. However, over the last thirty years, the fuzzy set approach has proved to be useful in these situations. It is this approach to optimization under uncertainty that is extensively used and studied in the second part of this book. Typically, the membership functions of fuzzy sets involved in such problems are neither concave nor convex. They are, however, often quasiconcave or concave in some generalized sense. This opens possibilities for application of results on generalized concavity to fuzzy optimization. Despite this obvious relation, applying the interface of these two areas has been limited to date. It is hoped that the combination of ideas and results from the field of generalized concavity on the one hand and fuzzy optimization on the other hand outlined and discussed in Generalized Concavity in Fuzzy Optimization and Decision Analysis will be of interest to both communities. Our aim is to broaden the classes of problems that the combination of these two areas can satisfactorily address and solve.

Book Description

How to decide when to say "yes" to a credit applicant-without jeopardizing your reputation or your company's bottom line Deciding whether a credit applicant is ultimately creditworthy involves more than just poring over their financial statements-it takes the kind of advice only an experienced credit expert, like Hal Schaeffer, can give. A 28-year veteran of the credit screening process, Schaeffer outlines the nuts-and-bolts of assessing a credit applicant's financial health and ability to make good on a line of credit. In part one's clear, four-part "A, B, C, D" format (A is for Analysis, B is for Building Essential Business Credit Information, C is for Considering All Factors,and D is for Decision), the author examines a prospective borrower from every angle, using formulas, checklists of what to look for, and available outside information sources (from Dun & Bradstreet to the Internet) to get a genuine picture of an applicant's current finances and degree of credit risk. Also outlined are the financial, credit, and business factors that go into a "sound business credit decision" a guideline for consolidating facts to vindicate your decision, as well as a series of twelve chapter-length case studies (contained in part two). Discussion includes:
* Determining the cost and accuracy of financial information
* Isolating information gaps in financial records
* The actual costs (including total/partial loss of sale, insurance fees) and value (including future sales to the customer) to your company if credit is extended
* The exact nature of the sale-large (or small); one-time deal or continuous; the expected profit margin
* The controls your company has over the customer
Complete with twelve chapter-length real-world case studies of problems typically encountered (with detailed solutions), Credit Risk Management offers practical, no-nonsense advice on how to minimize the risks-and maximize the benefits-to you and your company when you finally say "yes" to an applicant.

Customer Reviews:

YOU WILL NOT FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IN THIS BOOK.......2005-07-31

UNFORTUNATLY , THIS BOOK DID NOT PROFIDE ME WITH TECNICAL TOOLES TO ANALYSE FINANCIAL STATMENT , THE CASE STUDIES HAS ONLY FEW THINGS TO TEL , I THINK IT IS A GENERAL BOOK IN CREDIT MANAGEMENT .

A Review of Credit Risk Management.......2000-04-19

The book is not comprehensive in going through the mechanics of actual credit analysis. It does not fully detail how a balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement come together to give a picture of the customer.

The book also neglects the first crucial part of credit analysis, that is, spreading statements. It does not mention how financial statements, whether they be accountant's report, company prepared, tax returns, etc., need to be altered before any analysis takes place.

Also, the book does not show the parts of cash flow analysis that need further investigation, such as lease expense. Information such as that on tax returns, personal financial statements, personal credit reports, corporate financial statements, etc. come together to accurately state a customer's position is also not detailed.

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