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I recently paid a brief (one week) visit to Havana for the first time.My first view of socialism was a grim one. Little old ladies lining up for one roll of bread with a ration book. The poor sections of Havana looked grim, everywhere like a fortress as people disappear behind their solares. And then the better off parts like the Hotel Nacional where tourists congregate. Back home, searching for literature on Cuba, I found this book, Insider. It rings of truth, of authenticity, and gives the reader a sharp sense of Cuba under Castro. Kafkaesque, reminding of Marques and Orwell, it shows what can happen to a people under the power of a man who knows how to subject his citizens to his will. The Committees for the defence of the revolution, the way in which everyone spies on everyone else, the destruction of the economy in the name of revolution - are all frightening views of what can happen under totalitarianism. Is this where George Bush is taking America with his call for citizens to spy on each other? is it that far fetched to see totalitarianism underneath the veneer of Capitalist democracy?Someone should investigate how much Santeria (the local religion espoused by Celia Sanchez, Fidel's late companion)influenced Castro! This book has helped me to understand some of the glimpses I had of Cuban society as I interacted with Cubans in Havana. Castro is revealed as never before.As a Caribbean person generally sympathetic to the plight of the Cuban people, I thank Menendez for giving me a more realistic picture of his homeland. I recommend this book highly. It should be in print again.Edith Grossman,translator of Marques and Mutis, has effected a professional and creative moving of this fascinating story into English. Muy Bien.

This book provides a first hand look into Cuban reality before and after Fidel came to power. Written from the prospective of someone who participated in the fight against Batista as a student, undertook self-exile and subsequently returned to Cuba to face situations he would have never imagined, the reader gets a glimpse into what life was really like in Cuba in the 1950's through the early 80's. The author provides details about the early years of Revolution, as well as information on his encounters with members of Castro's government. He provides reports of his personal conversations with Che Guevara, and reveals Che "the man" and not Che "the icon". The author's tracing of his path through different Cuban government entities during the 1970's and early 80's in order to survive and eventually get out of Cuba, shows his determination and ability to face the the problems, constant uncertainty and paranoia in Cuban society. Due to his student activist history and various government jobs, the author is in a position to furnish invaluable analysis into the persona of Fidel Castro and the Castro regime. This book provides a realistic window into the Revolution and to what the Castro regime has meant to Cuba.

It has been sitting in my classroom for 5 years now. Some kid picked it up and asked if he could take it home and try to hatch the eggs. I said, "sure." Really doubted anything would happen since the eggs are so old. They did hatch, but did not survive long. Another kid who took some eggs home to hatch brought the one in that grew, and it was moving around and everything. I named him Clark, but he died an hour later. So we studied his eyes on a microscope slide. Clark the instant creature! He's cool!

I purchased this book for my 9 year old son. After we looked at it, we decided it would make a great project for his upcoming science fair. We followed the directions, and put the "eggs" in distilled water, and within 2 days, we had creatures darting around in the bowl. It is very interesting to watch them grow, day by day, they just keep getting bigger! Try this book!

This is a good book and will be help you to improves your grammar. English is my second language and I use this book on Class and I learned a lot.

This is a good book and I really recommend to solve all the problems and fill out the questions. English is my second language and this book helpme to improves my grammar.

"The problem with groupware is that it's been very expensive and difficult to implement. With the introduction of cheap and easy-to-construct Intranets, that's no longer the case," begins Melanie Hills in her new book, "Intranets as Groupware." Intranets and groupware can help employees communicate more effectively, capture and share their knowledge, and learn and innovate.

Melanie Hills is an Internet technologies consultant for Fortune 500 companies, and a founder of consulting firm Knowledgies. In this material, she builds on her earlier book - "Intranet Business Strategies" - and goes beyond basic Intranet installation to address building groupware capabilities into Intranets. Case studies are drawn from Intranet implementations in AT&T, Texas Instruments (TI), J.C. Penney, and EDS.

The material is well-presented, and includes checklists for choosing Intranet products, implementing groupware, and appointing Intranet facilitation consultants. 11 chapters cover a wide range of issues including advantages and disadvantages of Intranets, groupware product reviews, implementation paths and challenges, and the impact of groupware on workflow.

Some of the first organisations to create internal Webs included Lockheed, Hughes and SAS Institute. According to some estimates from International Data Corporation, there may be 4.7 million Intranet servers in existence by the year 2000, and the revenues for collaborative software will reach $6.6 billion that year.

Factors leading to the necessity of Intranets include worldwide acceleration of user expectations due to globalisation and spread of the Internet, and increasing needs for improving internal communication and knowledge worker productivity. Intranets can be fast, easy and cheap to implement, scalable, and flexible; they can capture and share expertise, create new business opportunities, and help leverage Extranets for purposes like EDI.

Possible disadvantages of Intranets include the potential for chaos, security risks, management fears, business culture clash, information overload, wasted productivity, and hidden or unknown costs.

Intranets have already been successfully deployed in numerous companies. EDS has acquired the right to place the U.S. Patent Information Services database on its Intranet; it also provides its employees with a customised news report service called infoAlert via PointCast, and uses chat as part of its Global Communicators Network and IRC for a CIO weekly chat. Bell Atlantic's Intranet saves several hundred thousand dollars through consolidation and reduced printing. Silicon Graphics has reported savings in processing requisitions via its Intranet, Silicon Junction.

J.C. Penney's Intranet, jWeb, helps cut costs in communicating between its offices in 37 countries. AT&T uses its Intranet as a virtual meeting place. Booz Allen says its Intranet has helped leverage its intellectual capital by recording its expertise and providing contact information for its consultants. Some such case studies are also available online, as in "How Sun Saves Money, Improves Service Using Internet Technologies."

Some companies even obtain additional revenues on Intranet sites by letting vendors advertise to their employees.

Groupware products help create an organisation memory, and boost communication, coordination and collaboration. They include functions like calendaring, scheduling, voice conferencing, videoconferencing, electronic meeting systems, data whiteboards, discussion and live chat. Due to the impact of the Intranet, costs of groupware are coming down, and they are becoming increasingly Web-enabled.

According to Peter Sange, author of "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation," the only sustainable competitive advantage comes from an organisation's ability to learn. This will require the use of trained personnel as "social systems analysts," according to Tom Davenport, author of "Process Innovation: Reengineering Work Through Information Technology" (in his piece called "Software as Socialware," published in "CIO" magazine).

A 50-page review covers groupware products like Lotus Notes and Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, Novell Groupwise, NetManage Chameleon, Oracle InterOffice, RadNet WebShare, Netscape Navigator and CoolTalk, Collabra, White Pine Enhanced Cu-SeeMe, Galacticomm Worldgroup Internet Server, Forefront RoundTable, Allaire Forums, and O'Reilly WebBoard.

Hills provides case studies of how such tools have actually helped collaboration for engineering product development, support human resources processes, conduct interviews and training across the Internet, manage financial reports, create document repositories, schedule team meetings, share resources like presentation materials, initiate trouble tickets, and provide version control for revised documents.

So how does a business figure out which tools - or suite of groupware - to choose? Hills provides a useful set of criteria for evaluation: the openness of the platform, its ease of use, basic and training costs, installation path, vendor support, ability to use it over the Internet, migration paths from other tools, and offline use.

Some proprietary groupware, such as Lotus Notes, requires "an army of highly trained programmers and systems administrators." Eric Hahn of Netscape strongly advocates the use of open standards, due to the "wonderful synergy when the same technology is used inside the corporation and on a planetary scale between corporations."

"Certainly the most talked-about advantage of Intranet groupware is the low cost," says Hills. Security is a concern for some Web-enabled products, though the situation should improve with developments like Secure Socket Layer. Some proprietary interfaces tend to be much richer in multimedia presentation and interactivity.

Four chapters cover actual implementation of Intranet groupware, and ways of calculating ROI (such as assessing the total costs of updating and reprinting manuals frequently for all employees in an organisation, and comparing this with the costs of setting up an Intranet and publishing the manuals online).

A good strategy for growing an Intranet is in much the same way as the Internet itself: a decentralised, grassroots, but sometimes chaotic manner. It helps if the CIO catches the vision of the Intranet and becomes the champion, says Hills. An outside consultant can help facilitate the process by identifying sources of information, forming an Intranet team, and helping them get focused. Infrastructure assistance from an ISP should be evaluated with respect to criteria like serving remote locations and mobile users, business service orientation, and points of presence.

Key points to remember include the need to build enthusiasm, create demos, address people issues and not just technical issues, use facilitators, and plan capacity ahead of demand.

Challenges lie in the dynamics of working in teams. "Groupware depends on sharing, which is an alien concept in most corporations today. The first step, long before you think about the technology, is to figure out how to get people to share all the things they've accumulated over the years and become so good at hoarding," Hills cautions. "You have to get people working together and cooperating before groupware will work."

This may be a problem in organisations where there is an entrenched hierarchy, lots of competition between employees, and lack of participatory discourse. "Successful implementations are usually bottom-up, grassroots efforts. It's most effective if groups want groupware," Hills observes. Successful Intranet groupware implementation gives employees the information they need, improves productivity, trust and creativity, and creates a flexible and adaptable organisation. "What differentiates a high-performing learning community from any corporate community is that the former has the 'knowledge ecology:' a dynamic and living web of computer-linked people with their experience, ideas, and expertise, that interact, feed and grow upon each other," according to George Por, author of "Corporate Knowledge Networks."

Future groupware developments include the increasing use of intelligent agents, Hills predicts. "Because of the effect of the learning curve, those who lag behind in adopting Intranet groupware and workflow may never catch up. Now's the time to start," Hills concludes.

In sum, "Intranet as Groupware" is a handy guide and reference for organisations evaluating the importance of Intranets and groupware; the checklists and case studies, along with the cited literature and online resources, round off the material perfectly. An online companion with updates and information about new products would have been a welcome addition.

With so much hype about intranets and groupware, it was amazing to find a book on these topics whose author: 1) writes from experience; 2) isn't a biased booster; and 3) balances technology issues with a first-rate understanding of the needs of people and organizations. If you want a hands-on, practical, step-by-step guide to understanding groupware and using an intranet to create it, I don't think you will be disappointed with this book. I recommend it highly and happily.

Dr. Duke, working under the mentoring of Alan Culpepper, has written a concientous, thorough, and fascinating analysis of a key pattern in the John's Gospel: Irony. This popular literary device permeates the fourth gospel, and is fundamental to the dualistic themes found throughout the work. Dr. Duke's research provides an essential schematic whereby the novice or the scholar can navigate the complexities of this gospel. Dr. Duke looks at the book with the eye of a trained scholar and the heart of a lyrical poet.

Dr. Duke, working under the mentoring of Alan Culpepper, has written a concientous, thorough, and fascinating analysis of a key pattern in the John's Gospel: Irony. This popular literary device permeates the fourth gospel, and is fundamental to the dualistic themes found throughout the work. Dr. Duke's research provides an essential schematic whereby the novice or the scholar can navigate the complexities of this gospel. Dr. Duke looks at the book with the eye of a trained scholar and the heart of a lyrical poet.

I have written to Tim Jacobus but I never knew about his personal life. Now, with this book I know almost everything about him! If you're a fan of Jacobus definitely buy this book.

It came from New Jersey is very
cool because it the Il. of
Goosbumps and I got some info did
you know R.L. Stine and Tim
Jacobus only saw each other one or
two or mabie three time in there
hole life

Rabbi Twerski is a remarkable man. Although he is a very orthodox Jew, he became a physician as well as a Rabbi. His field is psychiatry and he combines his two professions to give great advice in short chapters, generally about two pages. This book is a little like "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff," with a twinge of the religious aspect added in. Nonetheless, Rabbi twerski's observations are universal and would be of interest to non Jewish as well as Jewish readers.

The book is full of 1 page wonders with great information of all aspects of life, specifically pertaining to Judaism.

This second volume covers the bloody fights over the plains of russia, including a massive 450 photos/maps, of these 100 never published before, including the german version of the title. this is where we begun to realise the pain, difficulties and death faced by these men as they attempted to stop a overwhelming enemy, never giving up, rather dying than being captured as they struggle to keep the homeland safe and away of the enemys

An excellent report on the JG53 that starts by covering the deadly combats over Italy, where Stab, I and III/JG53, try to reduce the massive allied air superiority, taking us then to the retreat and final hours of one of the most famous fighter units of the Luftwaffe during WW2

Flowers--not on, but as a spiritual path. This is the principle behind kado--widely known in the West as ikebana--the Japanese art of aesthetic flower arranging. The point is emphatically made that, as with other spiritual art forms, it is not the art itself that leads to awakening and profound realizations; rather, it is how we approach the practice that determines our growth. In kado, the simple meditation exercises prepare for the process of composition; a genuine understanding of harmony of mind and body and of the oneness of nature are essential to success. Fully half of the book is devoted to preparation--a thorough understanding of the concepts, and development of effective meditation techniques. A chapter expands on the fundamental principles of kado--harmony, asymmetrical balance, artlessness, impermanence, and oneness with the universe--and to the classification of arrangements. A final chapter guides the beginner in several simple arrangements, while appendices provide sources for supplies and a glossary. Lovely and elegant line drawings illustrate important points throughout.

In The Japanese Way Of The Flower, Davey and Kameoka successfully collaborate to instruct the reader in the Japanese art of flower arranging and how it differs from Western floral art. The reader will learn simple meditation exercises to prepare for the process of composition; basic flower arrangements with color photos, diagrams, and step-by-step instructions; important Japanese aesthetic and spiritual concepts; the history of "kado" (The Way of the Flower) and its different stylistic schools; and where to find formal kado instructors and flower arrangement supplies. A very welcome addition to students of Japanese culture, interior decorators, florists, and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in floral arrangements, The Japanese Way Of The Flower is an impressive, authoritative, and comprehensive introduction.

This is a great book for programmer from the procedural world trying to lear Java. There is lot of comparison to Cobol code. The examples are detailed and more real world much unlike the examples found in other Java books. Chapter 9 on Object orientation is gem.

Instead of calling it "Java for Dummies" they decided to be nice to us old-timers and call it "Java for...Cobol programmers", but that's OK. Prepare yourself for a thick heavy meal that must be digested very slowly. Not a stone left unturned, very, very meticulous. There is a lot of exhaustive material so you will need a lot of time to go through this. Measure it not in weeks but perhaps in a few good months. But it will push you a good way up the path that many of us must take, for those of us who will not accept that there is more behind us than ahead of us. Go for it - and good luck to us all!