Agent Books

I am trying to locate Ken Miller and was curious if anyone has his email address?

Thank you,
Matt Miller
St. Louis, MO

This book is the perfect marriage between process improvement methods and Rob Lawton's Creating a Customer-Centered Culture. Ken has provided a clear roadmap for organizations to get focused on the customer, measure things that the customer cares about, and achieve those results with the least amount of pain and agony.
I have already recommended this book to several of my clients who are starting (or are already on) the journey of using teams, focusing on the customer and improving their organizations. It has everything you need, so it's a great reference book as well.

If you are a student of improvement, then this book is an "All You Can Eat Buffet" of your favorite foods. It literally takes the best of thousands of quality principles and tools and combines them into one easy to read and use manual.

Ken Miller's book on tools for change agents has failed to find a prominent place on my bookshelf not because of content, but I simply have not been able to put the book away since I first opened it. It reenergized me as a team leader and has contributed greatly to the effectiveness of our improvement efforts.

Chapters are written using examples that are well suited for the subject matter and that the reader can easily relate to. At the end of each chapter are easy to follow tools that will quickly become an indispensable component in your facilitating arsenal. My personal favorites include the techniques for getting more out of brainstorming, and Ken's methods for analyzing projects.

This comprehensive book is a must have for everyone who wants to see their company grow! Before you start your next team initiative do yourself an enormous favor, READ THIS BOOK!

Ken Miller has hit the nail on the head with The Change Agent's Guide to Radical Improvement. Whether you are a seasoned Change Agent / Quality guru, or somebody who often asks "Why do we do it this way?", you need to read this book. That experience alone will leave you energized and chomping at the bit to identify and begin projects that ACTUALLY DELIVER RESULTS.

Miller has provided us with a comprehensive "How-to" guide for making your organization (corporate, government, education, healthcare, Service) and yourself very valuable. The chapters are well-written, easy to understand and thought-provoking. From the proper diagnosis of a project to the implementation to the wonderful method of tracking results, it is literally the only book you need to drive change through your organization. Since reading the book and attending the author's academy, I've used many new, as well as old tools to more effectively run meetings, solve problems, improve processes and lead planning sessions. The big difference I've noticed with the use of the old tools is that I now use them in the proper situations. Miller also identifies the "Change Agent Body Of Knowledge," the features a person must have to be a successful agent of change.

Read this book. You won't regret it, and you might possibly change the way you approach your work. Appropriate for all levels of the organization, especially management.

Virtually every company or organization can benefit by engaging in a quest for excellence. David Hutton's book paves the way by explaining the opportunities and pitfalls which will be encountered. Success does not just happen. It must be planned, then plans must be executed, results measured and there must be followup. The Change Agent's Handbook covers it all. David explains the vital role of management and realizes how important it is for them to be continualy engaged. If you plan to make significant strides toward excellence read this book then keep it handy as a reference document. I have worked extensively with David and have watched him place into practice that which he preaches.

In my opinion, this is the best book on process improvement on the market today. It takes up where so many other books fear to tread and deals with practical issues of organizational dynamics. An excellent companion volume to the CMM, SPICE, or other technical framework.

I came across this book at a time when I was dealing with major changes in my organization. Since I was Vice President level, I had to sell my colleagues on many of the things I thought necessary for our survival all of which meant a change in process and thinking. I was a change agent. This book championed me through the steps required to meet the task. We did very well as we brought about a change in culture and in the way we would "do business".

David Hutton has created an outstanding resource for those responsible for managing change within their organizations. This book is not just for Change Agents . . . I recommend it for all leaders in any organization. The subtitle, "A Survival Guide For Quality Improvement Champions" is on the money. This book covers it all!

This is an extremely valuable book which provides something not many other sources can: an unbiased, scientifically grounded analysis of psychoactives which also includes realistic cultural context, fascinating history, a sense of whimsy, and subjective descriptions of effects. This makes it of use to all kinds of people: those interested in psychopharmacology, drug therapy for mental illness, ritualistic and spiritual drug use, the mechanisms of the brain, safe and informed recreational drug use, and simply being informed about a broad and complicated social reality.

The book spends about equal time on the mechanism of action and chemical structure of the substances described, and the various uses to which they have been put throughout global human history. In these descriptions, it thoroughly cites studies and explains why said studies are the most useful, making it rather unbiased. That said, it is occasionally critical of drug laws, though any objective analysis is likely to come to the same conclusion, and included are very subjective quotations, though these are never stated as fact and give the book a page-turning, fascinating sense of narrative unexpected from a textbook. Overall, the work's scientific rigor is unquestionable and unlikely to meet critique but from opponents of drug use so strong in their fervor that they would deny objective truth.

Having been last updated in 1996, there are a few missing pieces of information regarding current drugs of abuse. For example, dextromethorphan is mentioned, but in very little detail compared to it's fairly widespread use in the current underground drug culture (and it is categorized mysteriously in the opioid section, despite being fairly well-recognized as a ketamine-like dissociative at higher doses). Another curious omission is Salvia divinorum, not recreationally popular until about the time of publication, but having been in shamanic use in Mexico for a very long time, and written about in scholarly literature as early as the 1960s. One other drawback for certain uses is that this is not a practical handbook: there is not much in the way of dosage information, and durations when present are a bit buried in the text rather than presented up-front. Luckily, the book, as stated earlier, is very well-referenced, and exploration of the works of cited authors/researchers (Huxley, Hoffman, Shulgin, et al) will provide far more depth into many of these areas. Hopefully future editions will be updated to include these and any other important omissions.

Hello, I just unpacked my copy today and I'm already hooked, ironically enough.

Great book. I'd highly recommend it!

This book has it all, chemistry, cultural context, use, abuse, past, present and future. Is geared toward someone who has at least taken some o-chem, although non-science types could still get something out of it. The synthesis explanations can be a bit in depth, I have a degree in chemistry and a bit of that was way over my head. Book is also well refrenced, so should you ever get the urge to make some of these drugs you know where to go.

While I would not say that the merit of the book lies in its non-committal stance, I was certainly convinced that the author knew his chemistry. My reading was facilitated by the poetic interludes and anecdotes, which seem to have become a genre within science writing. Mr. Perrine should write another book, non-technical, and I am sure he will be as entertaining and informative. Inspired by his book I have released my newsletter with this theme this time.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the book is mind-altering itself. It changed the way I looked at my erstwhile indulgences.

Great book. Includes supportive drugs, antinausea, etc. Includes references for regimens. We NEED a new addtion with dose dense, DA-EPOCH-R, high dose MTX for PCNSL, new drugs, etc.

This book has been very helpful during my cancer treatments. I think other patients would also like this book. I recommend it.

Excellent handbook. I am a student in medical school, and during the oncology rotation it saved me. It even taught my professor a thing or two, and now he wants to buy it for his other students and nurses.

This book is a tremendous guide. I am a fellow in Oncology/Hematology (Cancer Care), and desperately needed a concise, thorough guide to all the various chemotherapy regimens. This book is now utilized by my nurses, pharmacists, attending physicians, and patients. Remembering all the doses, important side effects, and necessary supportive measures for effective chemotherapy administration is impossible, and this book has it all. This book even points me to the best references when I need a little more information about a regimen.

Dr. Langerak and Dr. Dreisbach have now helped many of my patients. Their book cuts down on possible dosing errors, keeps the Oncology team on the same page, and allows for more efficient and effective care.

All Oncology personell should have this book. It is especially helpful to Oncology/Hematology Fellows, Pharmacists, Oncology Nurses, Oncology Nursing Units, Attending Oncologists, Residents, Students, and of course, Patients. I highly recommend this well organized up-to-date book.

This was a great book! It gave me a real appreciation for how foreign the medieval way of thought is from current -- because of the printing press. If you've read Walter Ong's _Orality and Literacy_, this is similarly mind-blowing.

I will caution, however, that this is a very academic book. She spends a fair amount of time refuting people who disagreed with her. It is also designed for historians. I'm no dummy, but some stuff went over my head. (If you know the following phrases and people, you'll be fine: Plutarch, incunabula, Tridentine, Rabelais, Marlowe, the _Digest_, Cujas.)

I gave it five stars because it was definitely worth slogging through, but I wish I had gotten the abridged version instead.

We have come to forget that the introduction of the printing press by Gutenberg mattered, or we have come to assume that it directly led to the Protestant Reformation. Eisenstein wondered how true that was, and what other changes the press wrought in European society in the couple of hundred years after the press was introduced. Start with the concept of authorship--once books could be reproduced in quantity, authorship mattered. Then consider the question of alphabetization and indexing. Then think of what happens when travel writers describe native dress--people start believing the books and variations become more extreme to meet the printed word. That's just the beginning. Eisenstein's book is not just an incredible work, well written, about the effect on our culture of the printing press. It is also the sort of book that makes one realize how unimaginable and vast the influence of any invention can have on a society. This book is critical for media studies, history, printing, typography, just to better understand our own society, or for the pleasure of a good, thorough, read.

No, Dr. E did not write in this book about the Internet at all but at least in pages 65-110, you can see the parallels. There is plenty here to chew on and yes, having both volumes together is a whopper but this is at the bare minimum a TOP 10 book for everyone in the Western world because it gets right to the heart of this reality we call "economics".

Excellent history and philosophy reading when you look at it from the right angle. It ranks up there with Drahos - Philosophy of IP, Kuhn's, Sorensen's thought experiments, Thoreau's selected journals, Dewey's how we think and Einstein's ideas and opinions.

If you suspect that the Internet is changing our world in profound ways, this book will stir insights into how technology can rapidly transform nearly every aspect of a culture. Unlike most commentators on the Renaissance, who take for granted the fact that printing brought about great change, Eisenstein focuses on *how* technology triggered and accelerated dramatic change. She focuses especially on the role of exposure to new points of view.

For example, collaboration of printers, scholars and publishers in the first great publishing house, the Aldine Press, brought together people who previously had little knowledge of one anothers' world-views. In order to work together effectively, they were forced to see through one anothers' eyes. Indirect access to new viewpoints had an even broader impact. The ready availability of books allowed a genius such as Copernicus to study cosmology without devoting years of his life as a mendicant scholar. Eisenstein observes that the the movements of stars and planets hadn't changed; the newly available data were the opinions of previous cosmologists. For the first time in history, one could compare and contrast cosmologies in one's spare time, without sacrificing years to visit scattered libraries.

Although Eisenstein makes no attempt to compare early modern Europe with today's world, a reader who is familiar with today's technological changes can hardly help but draw parallels. Gutenberg, the technical purist who was repeatedly sued for refusing to ship his product, acted out the role of the prototypical Silicon Valley inventor suffering from "creeping elegance." Gutenberg's typography has rarely been equalled, but he died bankrupt, his invention owned by the "venture capitalists" who funded him. Meanwhile, Aldus Manutius persuaded compromise among printers (technologists) and church scholars (the publishing establishment). The Aldine Press expertly packaged information into books and catalogs that were easy to sell. Like Microsoft, the Aldine Press became a dramatic business success by delivering excellence in packaging of others' inventions, not by making technical breakthroughs.

Although Eisenstein does not focus greatly on the seat of power in early modern Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, the church clearly suffered the greatest losses of influence as a result of the distribution of new ideas. Eisenstein recalls the protests of Martin Luther to the Pope, saying that he had no idea how so many people obtained his theses so quickly. The Wittenberg Door appears as an early Web site, allowing anyone, including publishers, to seize ideas that previous could not have achieved wide distribution. Eisenstein's readers will surely wonder which institutions in today's world stand to lose influence and power as a result of easy access to a variety of points of view via the Internet.

When I decided to put secret agent John Trevor Byrne into some exciting but believable situations, I had no idea the James Bond franchise was gearing up to do the same thing with the reboot of their action hero.

Most of the action in my thriller takes place in a nice suburban town in Central Pennsylvania. Not the place you'd expect to find terrorists planning to kill millions of people around the world.

Death Dealt the Hand is currently being adapted into a motion picture screenplay. Here's your chance to see how Trevor was envisioned, before he becomes a movie legend.

When you need a real man to take care of business, you need Trevor!

And they say government workers don't work. Trevor Byrne not only does a good job, he enjoys his work and its rewards.

DNAY, a genetic lab working on a cure for the AIDS and HIV viruses has gotten approval to do human testing and they are looking for subjects.

Is Karl Josephes carrying out the will of God as he claims? Would he succeed? Has Trevor reached the end of his luck? His life?

John E. Bailor takes you on quite a trip to find out, so fasten your seat belt and hang on.

Review by Wanda C. Keesey (author of Lost In The Mist release date May 2008)

I purchased this book based on the very hot guy on the cover having to admit the back cover photo of the author is sexy too! Why can't I find a man like that??? Sorry I digress.....anyway the book is a non-stop action thriller that women as well as men will enjoy. Trevor comes across as a boy next door type who just happens to be a super secret agent. He handles women as well as he does his hand gun and I found I simply could not put down this book needing to know what was going to happen to him next....The action scenes were not over the top and very believable, the villian was a well described and fleshed out. The setting for the book was written so well that if I closed my eyes I could almost see the scene the author was describing with visions of Stuart Townsend playing Trevor on the big screen coming to mind. The climatic Celtic ending left me feeling a wide array of emotions the foremost being OK when's the next book coming out....With a story this good I don't want to wait to see what lies ahead for Trevor. John Bailor ROCKS!

I received this book as a present. I couldn't put it down. It was a great read and the author really fleshes out the characters. John E. Bailor is going to be around for quite awhile. I can't wait for the next book!

If you are in law enforcement this book should do more for you than kindle rage. It's background information shows that the war on drugs was based on loosely proven propaganda which has been far out dated now. This war that we spend so much of our money on, like other wars our current administration is involving us in, is shown to be basically useless. Desperado should do more for a person than piss them off, it's shows what's wrong with the system we have in place and is meant to motivate people to push for a change in our system. If only we hadn't already conformed to what society holds true certain drugs would be decriminalized today. Let's face it, the best way to put a dealer out of business is take over his business. Not only would it save money, but it would ensure a quality safeness to the drugs we have roaming the streets today. In short, let this be a guide for future change. All it takes is one person to see the light and stand up for a cause, no matter how comfortable they are with their lifestyle already.

As a current federal "narc" and former "border rat" (9 years on the US/Mexico border in California), I feel that Shannon did an excellent job portraying the past drug problems in Mexico. Guess what? We did not solve them then and the problem is worse now. Customs Commisioner Von Raab and DEA Administrator Lawn were very outspoken on the issue of the kidnapping of Enrique "Kiki" Camarena. Of course, that was before the days of "political correctness". America still refuses to decertify Mexico due to their unwillingness to truly combat drugs and continued reputation of graft and corruption. Having met and worked with many mentioned in DESPERADOS, I have utmost respect for those who indeed fought the drug war. Elaine Shannon's DESPERADOS is worth the time to read and is a must for the drug agent's home or office library.

This book should be read by all law enforcement oficers who enforce drug laws. Will enlighten and enrage at the same time, I would recomend it as reading for all law enforcement who work along the US/mex border or any city plagued by narcotics.

Events in this book revolve around the kidnapping and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1985. It is not only the story of how this came to pass, but an examination of US drug policy in the '70s and '80s, and reveals the flimsiness of Reagan's "war on drugs." The reader will be outraged by the manner in which political considerations took precedence over the apprehension of the killers of an American agent. Despite my outrage at what I read, the book is gripping and an excellent piece of documentary work. An excellent case study of the investigation into the Sinaloa cartel.

This was written soon after the war (initially as a secret document) and is a candid assessment of the double-cross program's successes and failures; fortunately for the Allies, the former greatly outnumbered the latter. The author explains which operations worked, which did not, and why. He also explains how they could have exploited the system for further gains had they been more confident of their effectiveness in deceiving the Germans, but he also explains why they were cautious and why it was reasonable to be cautious given the circumstances. Details of individual cases are often fascinating, including meetings with German handlers in neutral nations and dealing with uncooperative agents. My only complaint was that the acronym glossary did not cover a lot of the acronyms used in the book.

J.C. Masterman's "The Double-Cross System: The Incredible True Story of How Nazi Spies Were Turned into Double Agents" should be required reading for all counterintelligence and other human intelligence (HUMINT) personnel. Even after a 20+ year career as a human intelligence professional myself, this is one of the few "spy" books that I have. I consider this book a counterintelligence "how to" text book. To get the full impact of this book, I suggest first reading Ladaslas Farago's "Game of the Foxes", based on the files of Nazi Germany's intelligence service. After reading the German side of the story, the full impact of J.C. Masterman's book and this amazing intelligence operation will hit you right between they eyes.

This 1972 book explains how the British Secret Service actively ran and controlled Germany's spies during WW II. All German agents who were sent to Great Britain were captured; they either worked for the British Secret Service or were executed. This activity involved the cooperation of many branches of government (p.viii). This cooperation was the one essential condition for success. The examples given by this book could be a manual of operations. Page xii gives the purposes of the Twenty Committee. Other books were written before, but this is the best document on the system. This book was published to offset the bad publicity suffered in the fifties and sixties (p.xvi).

Page 49 says the German spies dropped by parachute were "an easy prey", and could not make radio contact "because of defects in the instruments themselves". I think this implies the British had a mole in the Abwehr who cleverly sabotaged their radios.

One of the reasons for this system was "to get evidence of enemy plans and intentions from the questions asked by them" (p.58). Chapter 5 gives many examples, such as the American Questionnaire which asked detailed questions about Hawaii and Pearl Harbor in August 1941 (p.80). Page 85 tells of Plan Midas, a successful money laundering operation where Nazi money paid for British counter-espionage! Chapter 8 notes that sending information back to Germany via double agents meant that the enemy would not send in other agents (p.108).

Deception was best assured by preventing dangerous information from being passed on, not by passing misinformation (p.110). They passed on facts which lead the enemy to deduce false intentions. Page 116 tells of the German agent who stayed in Lisbon and created stories of his visits to England. "Since he always reported what the the Germans expected to hear, and since many of his guesses were startlingly near to the truth, he was more and more readily believed." In April 1942 agent TRICYCLE was to report on American research into the atomic bomb (p.176). 1942 marked a change: Germany now sought information on British offensives, not defenses. In 1943 the policy of the XX Committee was to reduce the forces on the Russian front. Page 138 tells of METEOR, the German triple agent. By 1944 the sole interest was the grand deception for the Normandy invasion. To make the date of attack appear later, to indicate the wrong location of the attack, and to suggest the attack was just a feint. The reports on the V-1 flying bomb were used to make them fall short of the target (p.179).

Why did the Germans fail and the British succeed? He says it was the personal integrity of the British. German blunders were due to Abwehr officials profiting from their agent, and could not honestly judge the agent's work. Another is the fact that espionage in wartime is difficult and usually unprofitable; counterespionage is comparatively easy and yields satisfactory results (pp.187-190). Since espionage and counterespionage deal with different sides of the same problems, they should be as united as possible. At least activities should be on records accessible to each other. (This book necessarily lacks all mention of British spying in Germany.)

The Author was one of the few who ran the double cross system in MI5 using captured spies they ran back false intel on the planned invasion of France. Making the German's think that Normandy was a ploy to weaken the fortifications at Calais. The Best agent was codenamed GARBO whom the German's still believed in at the end of the war. They fooled them with false bomb damage reports from the V1&2 Rockets causing them to aim the Rockets short therefore missing London. A Great book on the Secret War.

Easy to use and carry with all of the pertinent information needed to Rx antibiotics. Well researched and up to date.

This is an amazingly useful and easy to use book! Unlike most other antibiotic guides this one gives you all the information you need when a patient with an infection is in front of you in the office. Not only the drug of choice, but useful alternative therapies, dosages (adults and children), common adverse effects and other helpful prescribing information. And it's so easy to find the infection you're looking for- since the book is arranged from anatomical top (HEENT)in the front to bottom (GU) in the back. There's a separate section for antimicrobials in addition to the one for the disease syndromes. The book fits perfectly into a lab coat (or shirt) pocket and is up to date and highly accurate. The best antibiotic guide I've seen.

A fellow medical student showed me this pocket book and I am glad I bought it. It is very easy to use and the print is readable. The best part of this book is the list of dosing for Peds. I don't have to look up the amount based on the kg of the child; its right there. Highly recommend for those of us who work or do clinical rotations in the out-patient setting.

This is an amazingly useful and easy to use book! Unlike most other antibiotic guides this one gives you all the information you need when a patient with an infection is in front of you in the office. Not only the drug of choice, but useful alternative therapies, dosages (adults and children), common adverse effects and other helpful prescribing information. And it's so easy to find the infection you're looking for- since the book is arranged from anatomical top (HEENT)in the front to bottom (GU) in the back. There's a separate section for antimicrobials in addition to the one for the disease syndromes. The book fits perfectly into a lab coat (or shirt) pocket and is up to date and highly accurate. The best antibiotic guide I've seen.

Superbly written with eloquence and humour in a style that is accessible to all readers. Presents the concept of wildlife conservation as fundamentally logical and intelligent, without the preachy jargons. Gripping and exhilarating.

The audience cannot help but root for the wildlife conservationists, or risks identifying with corrupt, incestuous, drugged-up, violent imbeciles who choose to disregard conservation to wallow in greed and callous destruction just to satisfy their uncontrollable basal excesses. Thoroughly enjoyed his unrestrained, non-PC disgust with humanity!

Sadly, with a little thought, the audience must realize that it has much more in common with more depraved examples of humanity than with those too rare and few individuals who dedicate their lives to wildlife conservation.

Having read Reisner's Cadillac Desert, I couldn't wait to read this. This book is different - and probably more readable to more people. There's more of a defined storyline, and has a more limited number of engaging characters. He follows 3 attempts to protect wildlife from poachers. The style is reminiscent of John McPhee (which I mean as a BIG compliment). If you can find this book, get it!

Simply the best wildlife conservation book around. Follow game warden Dave Hall as he works undercover among good ol' boys in Lousiana, Hell's Angels in Alaska and the mafia in New York City in an amazing, accessible (if you can find it) true story that'll be bound to raise your blood pressure over what poaching has done to our wildlife.

Reisner is an exhaustive researcher, who then parlays massive factual data into readable, entertaining (sometimes disturbing) prose. I found Game Wars to be more reader-friendly than Cadillac Desert in that the book moved faster and showed me a very human side of wildlife law enforcement. Through Reisner, I was taken along on numerous exciting U.S. Fish & Wildlife missions, including several life-and-death encounters between federal agents and big-time commercial poachers. As usual, Reisner imparts a sense of what the law is, how it works, and where it needs shoring-up. I would recommend the book to anyone interested in animals, law enforcement, or conservation.