Enterprise Books

Have played Ireland and am looking forward to playing Scotland. This book seems an excellent guide to courses, how to approach all aspects of a trip. I especially like the amount of coverage given to the not so famous "gems"-that has altered my thinking somewhat in planning a course itinerary. Well written and very user friendly guide.

I used this book to plan my golf trip to Scotland for my brother and I, along with help directly from Mr. Ferguson himself. You really need to read this book over and over again to reap the full benfit of all the info in here. He covers so much important information. I planned my own unique trip, choosing golf courses and places to stay, plus rental car and when to go and what to bring. Our trip came off with no problems, all tee times, rooms, travel, directions, etc were all right on target. We even met other golfers who were using the book as well. I know we saved money using this book as apposed to going through a agancy. I will be using his service again on my next trip as well.

Take some good advice from a guy (Ferguson) who has been there and done that. Very easy reading with some greats tips for planning your trip. You'll pay for the book just by following his car rental recommendation.

You can scroll down to other reviews of this book, I would simply be repeating the praises that others have for this golf/travel guide.

I devoured this book in almost one sittting. The advice is sincere, genuine and as helpful as travel advice gets.

There is no mystery why everyone has rated this book five stars: it IS that good.

I am planning a trip to Scotland in 2009 for our regular foursome. With this book I have a good idea what our group needs to decide on before we go.

(E.g., Is playing at St. Andrews the major reason for our trip? Do we want to stay in a hotel/a B&B/a self-catering location? Do we want to stay in St. Andrews town itself or are we willing to pack up and re-locate to other locations? Do we want to spend $350 to play one fantastic course or 4 lesser-known links?)

This book is practical and I recommend it WITHOUT any reservation!

I have been to Scotland with tour operator, but this book is excellent if you want to save money and plan the trip yourself. Great review of golf courses and good ideas of lodging and traveling. Highly recommended. If you can find a better book, let me know.

How often have most of us walked down the street and ignored the far too many homeless people that abound in most major urban centers in North America? One man I know with a schizophrenic son always carries large amounts of change in his pockets. He is generous with the change because, if circumstances were different, his son just might be among the homeless. Most of us simply tune the homeless out without thinking. Steve Lopez, to his credit, did not.

He took the time to be curious about one such person because of that person's talent for music and that led him on a journey to tell his readers in LA and eventually the readers of his book all over the world about the plight of those with mental illness. For his kindness to another human and for alerting people to this problem, he is to be commended.

But the issue here is that in any caring society, people who are ill should not, for any reason, be allowed to plummet to the point where they wind up homeless or, as often happens, in jail. Dr. David Dawson, who wrote the preface to my book Schizophrenia: Medicine's Mystery - Society's Shame and wrote and directed the film Cutting For Stone said that "the mentally ill of many western countries are not faring as well as they might have in 1960 or 1970, despite our advances in knowledge, treatment, and our nations' wealth".

The Soloist mentions that Ayers refused medication and some of the reviews have wondered how much autonomy we should give people who are sick to refuse treatment. One reason that Dawson and others have concluded that those with schizophrenia fare less well now than earlier is that we do allow too much autonomy. People who lack the capacity to understand that they are ill are still allowed to refuse treatment.

Some European countries such as Norway and The Netherlands, as I pointed out in my book, have laws that do allow for treatment in these cases, do respect individual rights and do manage to avoid our problems of homelessness amongst the severely mentally ill.

This book does help us to understand and be sympathetic but we must go beyond that as a society and deal with these problems at a societal level.

Marvin Ross
author of Schizophrenia: Medicine's Mystery - Society's Shame

The Soloist is one of those books that I want to give to everyone I know (and maybe even those I don't) just so we can talk about it later. On his way to work one day LA Times journalist Steve Lopez meets Nathaniel Ayers, a Julliard-trained homeless paranoid schizophrenic playing a broken and battered violin. The book chronicles their resulting relationship through all its complexities, challenges, and rewards. Though the title might lead you to believe that music redeems Ayers, I think it might ultimately be Lopez who finds redemption.

The Soloist challenges what most of us believe about the homeless, the mentally ill, and what's "best" for them. For example, finding Ayers a place to live is the easy part - getting him to want to live there is a complex dance of trust, safety, and shared responsibility. Lopez gives Ayers assistance, time, money, friendship, family, and access to countless resources, but ultimately the friendship is defined by what Ayers is able to accept more than by what Lopez is willing to give.

In the end, this is an amazing story of about humanism, commitment, community, courage, love, and acceptance.

There are very few page turners in non-fiction for me, but this book was difficult to put down. The impact of mental illness in our society is not examined enough, and The Soloist has an honest, respectful way of addressing the myriad issues which surround this crisis in our culture. An entertaining and meaningful book which strikes just the right pitch.

A Los Angeles reporter discovers a homeless musician playing a 2-string violin under a freeway bridge. The musician is not just hacking away, but he's playing Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Bach. Intrigued, the reporter begins spending time with the homeless man -- initially with the idea of getting a column or two out of his story, but soon realizing this is the larger story of the shameful treatment of homelessness in America.

Written as a developing drama, it's easy to see why this book was immediately optioned as a movie, starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. It is a tale of ups and downs, frustrations and breakthroughs, human kindness and human cruelty. Nathaniel Ayers alternately soars -- impressing professional musicians with his sensitivity and technique -- and plummets into profanity-laced tirades against the world. Lopez's portrait of mental illness is harrowing and sobering, as he learns just how difficult (if not impossible) recovery can be.

Some commentators (and reviewers) have accused Lopez of taking advantage of Ayers in telling his story for a book and movie, but I believe the spotlight that this turns upon the plight of the homeless is a greater goal. Let's hope the end of Reaganomics also brings with it some compassion for the newly disenfranchised victims of this economy.

Steve Lopez has written a moving story about Nathaniel, a homeless man, once a student at Julliard School of music. Mental illness has over taken his life and robbed him of what could have been another famous performer of classical music.
Through Steve's articles in the LA Times, he opens a world to a stranger that he met on a street corner, living on Skid Row, and whose world revolves around nothing but music. Music takes Nathaniel into a mind of his own world that no one seems to understand.
Beethoven rules his life. Nathaniel receives an opportunity to meet Yo Yo Ma who attended Julliard the same time he attended classes before his breakdown. Yo Yo gives Nathaniel an opportunity to play his cello.
Many times Steve wants to give up on Nathaniel, but he perseveres and makes a break through. This book is moving and a whole new world opens to some of us that is unaware of of the struggles of mental health. You appreciate those who work hard to help change their lives and their world they live in.

This was a pretty decent read -- we practice a lot of these at my workplace but I think what this book really shows is the attitude of an entrepreneur.

Ricardo Semler calls himself a maverick, but he's actually a visionary. Semler, now 49, was way ahead of the curve 25 years ago when he radically altered the structure and philosophy of his father's company, Semco. Long before most businesses acknowledged that employees were thinking, feeling human beings and not timecard-punching robots, Semler rebuilt the infrastructure at Semco, eliminating layers of bureaucracy and allowing employees to decide their own fates. They determined their own schedules, pay scales and dress codes. Semler drastically reduced paperwork; he restricted memos, for example, to a single page. He believed that empowered employees, freed of their corporate shackles, would be motivated, creative and productive. You may find some aspects of that approach unrealistic or totally impractical for your organization. You may even think Semler is crazy. At the very least though, getAbstract believes executives should give careful consideration to his approach. His innovations are still relevant, even a quarter of a century later.

Great book. Amazing story.
Lot's of good lessons to be learned here. I read it all the way through and enjoyed the writing style a great deal. A quick read with fascinating stories and good information.

I think this book gives In Search of Excellence a run for its money as the all time great. This book really promotes a different way of thinking about the workplace in a much more collaborative way. I can't wait to start his other book the Seven-Day Weekend.

I have been strugling about how to have an organization or a corporation that are at the same time efficient and humanistic/democratic. Although people normally receives these types of ideas with reserve, the feeling is that it is almost impossible (take out the "almost" if you wish).

After reading Maverick everything changes. We have heard histories before, for example, ancient Athenas, Robert Owen cooperative success in 19th Century England, Mahatmas Ghandi, and so forth. However, rarely a 20th Century corporation has gone so far as Semco, at least to the best of my knowledge.

If you are interested in "real" humanistic-democratic management, you must have this book in your reading list.

Excellent! Great advice, great stories and easy to keep focused. Definately helping me stay focused in writing my business plan and staying focused on my dream in transitioning from corporate America to being a Women Owned Business!

To be able to be your own boss and follow your passion and make money is everyone's dream. Birthing the Elephant is a practical and inspirational guide not only for women but for men who would like to leave the corporate world to follow their dream. The book does not sugar coat the problems a new entrepreneur faces but gives realistic tips and guidelines of what to do and what to expect at different stages of a business venture. It encourages and cautions, providing different strategies, realizing that each endeavor is individual but there are many common threads. The real life stories make it a very interesting read.

This book is very inspirational! Being a college student interested in the world of marketing, I found that this book gave me even more inspiration to follow through with my dream of starting my own business. The examples given in this book are outstanding and the hints and ways to start your own business are extremely helpful!

This book is a perfect read for college students. Being one myself, this book gives perfect insight on how a woman should approach the business
world. After reading the book, I found a new intrest in perhaps wanting to start a business of my own when I graduate.

Birthing the Elephant is a great book, its serves as an informative guidebook for the business minded individual who want to become a successful entrepreneur. The book motivate peolple to ignore the "you can do it, its hard, people have fail excusses " and push individual to seriously consider the positive possibility of starting a small business. Great book to own, its a must read. The price is also not bad. you can't beat this two combinations.

"Growing a Business" is pretty old, from 1988, so there is no mention of the Internet, little about software, and nothing at all about startups. In fact, I was struck when the author mentioned the computer for the company. Not a, but the.

Even so, the book is a must-read for anyone who actually wants to build a business that makes money, contributes to society, and does something useful. Hawken doesn't go into a ton of specifics about finding an idea or market, but here are some examples of thoughts you'll find in the book:

* Address problems that money alone cannot solve.
* Money goes where it causes the least embarrassment.
* Focus on a niche instead of developing a new market.

Also discussed are building a good culture, focusing on customers, funding, and lots of other great insights. The lack of technology talk produces a list of business lessons and people skills necessary for those who want to create a business instead of just raising funding or boosting egos.

Published 20 years ago, this book's advice couldn't be more superbly useful today. In fact, over the past 20 years, the polluting tripe that we are fed in terms of advertising became even worse, and so Hawken's call for refreshingly honest, clear and crisp communication with the customer (not consumer) which makes a business stand out from the crowd is more relevant than ever.

The book cuts through the regular business cliches and hogwash, and gives you sound advice for organically growing a business in which you, your employees and your customers are as satisfied and fulfilled as possible. Highly recommended.

good book for the people who are already in to business or planning to start

Form any startup, the founding team must commit to a getting it right - for it is not easy to getting your market and product right - what you need is likely what I needed for my latest startup - Pay Parade [...] - author and entrepreneur Paul Hawken provides an insightful tale of how to farm your newly seeded company - whereas I thought of this book to help me with marketing, I ended up learning that it often takes more of a cultivated farming sensibility than any hard marketing science. Go ahead and treat yourself to a gift that keeps on giving - purchase yourself a copy of Growing Your Business.

What a spectacular little business bible for a world that has forgotten that business and people are one and the same. Read this book.

Nutshell review - The author defines an entrepreneur as anyone who starts, manages and assumes the risk of running a business. Keep this definition in mind when reading the book because it is against this definition that the book proceeds to analyze and argue against 67 "myths" commonly held about entrepreneurs. It is well written with each chapter presenting the arguments against various beliefs and ends with a point form summary of the myths dispelled (this last is very useful for finding the key-points later). The author cites various data and clearly argues his case and the whole book can be read in just a few hours. It certainly contains many insights into the small business owner and is worthwhile reading for that alone.

Personal comment: If we hold so many different ideas (i.e. myths) to be true about entrepreneurs then perhaps we and the author are thinking of different things. A key point the author makes about entrepreneurs is that most of them have apparently no desire to grow their business beyond a one-man show. Another finding the author makes is that most do not start a business as a desire to make more money, or for the thrill of starting a business, or any other such reason. The main reason entrepreneurs start a business is apparently to avoid working for someone else! These traits do not fit at all with my notion of what it is to be an entrepreneur. Perhaps one should separate those who just start their own business to avoid working for someone else (self-employed) and those that are driven and inspired to create and grow a truly great business.

Give this book to your partner as well so she/he will know what she is getting herself into before you start the business. To start, where was Shane 25 years ago when I needed him most while I was starting my first business. There was little help back then for the entrepreneur. I also completed an EMBA at an Ivey league school 3 years ago and this type of consolidated knowledge/wisdom was not available. What sets this book apart is that it is backed up by seemingly sound research and fact based evidence. So many other books on the market are anecdotal in nature that leads potential entrepreneurs (or anyone, see other reviews) astray.

I won't give all the good lessons away but here are a few:

1. People start business for one of 3 reasons: they can't find a job, don't like working for others, want to make lots of money. Which do you think is most successful?
2. Who is more successful in business on average: the software engineering startup or joe the plumber. The answer, which business would you roll $100k into if you had to make a choice between only the two. Come on, be honest with youself.
3. Why women start businesses and why they don't achieve the success that men do. They could very easily, they just have different goals.
4. Factors that will increase you success rate - gender, education, choice of industry to start a business in.
5. Entrepreneurship is like golf, looks easy but it is not. Its largely a winner take all endeavor where only a few win big. In fact he makes the argument that most people (upwards of 80%) will be better off financially as a employee given the risk/reward.
6. The correlation between country wealth and level of entrepreneurship. Hint: while the US may be the wealthiest its not the most entrepreneurial. Neither is Silicon Valley the most entrepreneurial area in the US!

One area the author misses is the toll it takes on your personal life although he does mention financial risks.

Scott Shane's work "Illusions of Entrepreneurship" was a valuable, yet sobering, addition to my library and knowledge base. He shines the light on many of the leading myths of entrepreneurship that scholars, practioners, and practioner-scholars such as myself proport.

Its enjoyable to read. Somewhat fun, its a good book to hammer through for practioners, policy makers, and academics alike. Supported by "facts" and research, it will lead one to rethink the link between entrepreneurship and economic development for beginners.

As a Ph.D. student researching entrepreneurship, innovation and regional development, I found this book valuable in helping me to question many of my basic assumptions that I took for granted. I also found Scott's Seminar in Entrepreneurship Research that I attended in 2007 in Cleveland to be helpful as well.

One of my takeaways as an entrepreneurship and innovation researcher was a renewed question and interest in methods. The entrepreneurs and related activites at the middle of the bellcurve are really not that interesting. What matters are the outliers. The use of empirical methods, the preferred way to go now amongst academic researchers, in order to better understand high impact entrepreneurship, is really not helpful. Qualitative methods and creative exploring will help us better understand these outliers.

-Michael Clouser, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Edinburgh, Centre for Entrepreneurship Research, University of Edinburgh; Research Associate, Edinburgh-Stanford Link, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh, Scotland.

This is a great book! Its about time that someone put together a book that offers a realistic perspective on starting a business! Its a quick and easy read and offers some great ideas for increasing the odds that the business you start will be succesful.

This book is the perfect example of the folks whose communication style goes like this: they tell you what they are going to tell you, they tell you, and then they tell you what they told you! And just for good measure (or to fill up more pages) this guy adds a numerical list of what he told you! Since the hardcover version I have runs just 165 pages before endnotes, you have to wonder if this is really a business magazine article, stretched waaaayyyyy out.

From reading business and economic development literature, I have often seen a distinction made between lifestyle entrepreneurs and other entrepreneurs. Shane makes no such distinction and I think the statistics he uses to bust myths are highly questionable. Do we really think policy-making in this important area should conflate every attorney who hangs a shingle to do real estate closings or draft wills, with businesses that aspire to develop new products, technologies?

On the other hand, if you are reading this because you want to leave your law firm and open a solo practice, or sell baked goods prepared in your home (lifestyle entrepreneurs) this book could be quite useful.

I just started my business several months ago and it has been a roller coaster ride! There have been some really discouraging days and this book helps me find new ideas and inspiration to keep on going. Romanus provides great advice and motivation to follow your dreams, I feel like I have a personal small business consultant beside me as I read this book!

The vast majority of books on business and entrepreneurship focus heavily on theory and case study, and lack practical, easy-to-follow steps to help you get started. This book helps you to identify what you're passionate about, and how to go about creating a dream business around whatever it is that you enjoy.

Romanus takes his years of experience working with literally hundreds of individuals and companies and boils it down to the essentials.

This isn't your average business book - it is a series of worksheets and activities to help you define, refine, and act. If you've never owned a business, but have always dreamed of breaking out on your own - this book is for you. If you've been in a startup before, and are thinking about trying it again regardless of your previous success, you'll still find a lot of helpful information to help you avoid the mistakes and pitfalls of too many startups.

Also -- if you get a chance, I highly recommend attending one of Romanus' events. He is energetic and provides great information. Its not just a rah-rah, motivational session -- you'll find it very valuable.

An excellent book for anyone considering starting their own business. It reads like a book, and has projects like a workbook. Do yourself a favor- do NOT skip through the project sections. Buy yourself a notebook, and do each section in order and as instructed, b/c quite frankly- if you can't do that, then you probably lack the self discipline to succeed at your own business.
I must have checked out every book in my local library when I was thinking about starting my own business, and I read them all. When I checked out this one, however, I immediately went to the Amazon site and ordered my own copy to keep.
Oh, and my business is doing quite well, thank you. :)

This book is exceptionally thorough; detailed and practical, with tons of worksheets and exercises to perform. However, it seems very focused on product-based business, versus service businesses. The author does include service businesses in his examples, but the exercises and worksheets seem to me to be very helpful for those people providing an actual product, with suppliers and vendors and product margins and the like. Overall a recommended book, especially if you're looking for an exceptionally detailed blueprint for moving from idea to execution.

A Complete Encyclopedia of Business in One Book-

A Complete Encyclopedia of Business in One Book - that is how Romanus Wolter has laid out his amazing business guide. From accounting to websites, everything you ever wanted or needed is in this book, K ick Start Your Dream Business. Refer to it again and again as your personal business bible.
- Joanne Vicotria, The Vision Coach, Author: Lighting Your Path! How To Create the Life You Want, and Vision With a Capital V - Create the Business of Your Dreams.

This book does a nice job of motivating you toward your leadership aspirations, but many times I felt like I was back in Jr. High school and was listening to my teacher tell me stories of when he was growing up. With all the author's experience and interaction with such high-profile icons of this generation (and a few past), I would think he could have transferred his leadership skills in a more adult and interesting way. Overall, the book was OK.

The Business Playbook: Leadership Lessons from the World of Sports by Brandon Steiner does a tremendous job of explaining why it is important for one to set goals, as well as telling you what steps you can take to help you in achieving your goals. The book is well written, with a good amount of actual sports stories featuring some of the biggest names in sports. One downside is that many of the athletes discussed in the book play or played on teams based in New York. I would assume that is because the Steiner's business is located in New York and therefore these are the athletes he has the most contact with. The stories that he does tell about the athletes, however, are closely related to the lessons he is trying to teach in his book. Seeing the success that these athletes have had is a great motivator for the reader to try to accomplish much the same success in business instead of on a playing field.

The book is broken down into chapters, and each chapter essentially highlights a different principle that one can use on the road to success. Within each chapter every principle is broken down even further into various sub-topics. Although some of the sub-topics may not flow together as well as they could have, this style made the book very easy to read as well as understand. None of the information in the book is too complicated for the average reader to comprehend, and all of the information is explained very well.

By associating success in business with success in sports Steiner does a tremendous job in offering a book that is fun to read as well as a book that offers real lessons in business and leadership. Everyone who is at least in part a fan of sports and works in a business field should take the time to read this motivational book. By reading this book you will be able to tie aspects of sports into your business career in ways you may have never even felt were possible.

The Business Playbook is hands down the best motivational book I have ever read! Anyone who reads this book will take at least one valuable lesson that they could use in both their business and personal life! Mr. Steiner has a true sports marketing mind, and in my opinion is the best in the business! Keep up the good work!!!!!!!

I thought this book was very intuitive. It really made think about my future goals, and how I should approach them. It is a good reading for anybody who wants to be successful in what ever they want to do. Being that I am a big sports fan I really appreciated the sport figures and events that brandon used as analogies. It should be required reading for buisness students and for anybody who wants to move forward in life. Great book!

I was lucky enough to read this book after the CEO of my company asked me to purchase it and write him up a quick synopis. It was a quick but powerful read and by the end of that same weekend my senses were ablaze with newly kindled hope and inspiration!

Brandon Steiner has a great sense of motivational ability, and unlike some who give advice with an heir of condescension, he has an amazing ability to strike a chord with the reader through highly assimilable, digestible prose and imagery. He presents a theme and then illustrates it anecdotally. In his line of business one can only imagine the stories you'd have after working so closely with such colorful clientele. At the end of each chapter there is a summary and a closing paragraph or two which ties all the subject matter together.

The book is divided into key principles: "Start with a road map; Find your niche; Wake up nervous!; Know your purpose; Go the extra mile; You never know; Get focused!; Nothing changes if nothing changes; It's not what happens, it's what you do with what happens; and finally, See success as a habit." I saw so many points therein which had immediate relevance to my life and my future goals.

I am very glad to have read "The Business Playbook" and strongly advocate to anyone who reads this to pick yourself up a copy. You'll be glad you did.

Michael G.
NY, NY

If you are looking for a book on messaging, this is an excellent book. It is a very good source of learning messaging technology if you are a novice in this area. It is also an excellent source of advanced knowledge for more experienced IT professionals, who may be interested in more details and would like to see a structured approach to messaging.

In many situations messaging is an excellent way of integrating applications in an enterprise. However, messaging is not the best solution for all the integrations needed in an enterprise. There are many other ways of integrating applications and Service Oriented Architecture provides a more comprehensive method of integration as it encompasses many different technologies including messaging, RPC, sockets, ORBs, and ESB. A book by the present reviewer with the title "SOA-based Enterprise Integration: A step-by-step guide to services-based application integration" provides a more comprehensive description of the integration patterns. The book is being published by McGraw-Hill in May 2009.

We had to redesign one of our really broken systems at work.

I validated our whiteboard sessions on the redesign by replacing every concept we discussed with a design pattern from this book mainly just for fun.

At the first meeting no one changed anything I drew and our main architect accepted the pattern based designed no questions asked and no changes whatsoever.

If you're architecting a data integration project at work get a cup of coffee and this book and get crackin'.

Remove much of the risk of refactoring your big apps at work.

Deciding on the best solution for an integration problem often involves difficult discussions between architects and implementors each of whom may hold a widely differing point of view. Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf have provided a marvelous reference that clearly depicts and explains the messaging pattern choices to be considered along with their respective merits. Being able to match the problem with these patterns and authoritatively illuminate and quickly settle design team discussions fully justifies having this reference near at hand.

When viewing all the forces on a pattern over the longer term, the right solution will often require a bit of additional design and implementation effort vis-a-vis the quickest (or entrenched) solution. By communicating, discussing, and applying widely-understood patterns the overall construction and maintenance costs for integration can certainly be reduced.

One real example of a much better implementation that resulted from this book was the application of the Claim Check pattern to pass a token representing a large PDF document in the message, rather than encode and embed the document itself. The book explains the pattern clearly, and the implementation was not only easier to work with (because the message payload was much smaller), but the solution has subsequently become a better fit with Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) middleware since the XML for the transaction and its metadata can be rapidly transformed without being burdened by passing the bulky PDF data within the message.

Another example was solved by using the book's detailed explanation of the Correlation Identifier pattern to facilitate the redesign of an legacy transaction message. The existing application had embedded the correlation identifier in the business message which limited the implementation to a single asynchronous message exchange. By following the book's recommendation to persist the correlation identifier outside of the business message, the application could be more readily integrated using standard messaging ESB middleware tools and became reusable in environments that required more than one messaging hop.

In both of these examples, the book served both to educate the participates on the relevant patterns and then served as a "referee" to move the discussion towards a standard and extendable solution. Without the benefit of this book as an authoritative reference, it would have been very difficult to introduce new flexible and agile messaging-based architectural solutions.

The patterns in this book were illustrated mostly with JMS. There were mentions of Tibco and webMethods a few places though. It makes it sound like most of the ideas for common integration patterns started in IBM labs. My background is mostly in a commercial middleware and I recognized most of the patterns from the projects I've done the last 6 years.
The mention of BPEL in the future trends section was prophetic. It looks like all the major vendors are moving toward orchestration using BPEL.
The design patterns were fairly comprehensive but I've noticed that more are being built around SOA and WOA today. Most companies are now using SOA and REST for integrations were it makes sense to do so.

I used this book on a recent consulting engagement and found it to be extremely useful. The authors discuss topics in depth then identify patterns in that area.

As an experienced Architect, one of the challenges I find in discussing solutions at a design level is the tendency of people to speak in implementation terms. This skews the design and makes it difficult to connect the solution with the business goals.

Hohpe & Woolfe's book provides an informative and practical language to creating flexible integration architecture.

I received this book when I had my son and enjoyed it so much that is was an easy choice for a gift for my friend! Full of wonderful stuff - recipes, songs, poems, and much more. My friend LOVED it!! Thank you so much for your quick service.

I love the books in this series, but the Little Big Book is one of my favorites because it is filled with childhood nursery rhymnes, stories, songs and recipes- many of which I had completely forgotten about until I read this book.

I received this book from a dear friend about 8 years upon the birth of my daughter. The book is lovely and has provided hours of entertainment for myself and my daughter. I now give this book and The Little Big Book for Dad's to all my friends to welcome their newborn.

I love giving books as gifts and The Little Big Book for Moms is my hands down favorite for baby showers. It also brings back childhood memories with it's games, poems, songs from the "old days". It's a great help for new moms who may not know or remember these tried and true ways to entertain children. There is also The Little Big Book for Dads and also for Grandmothers.

This is a wonderful colllection of timeless childrens' tales adn activities. We received one as a gift and now give one to the new mothers that we know.
How can one go wrong with such great authors such as: Angelou, Caroll, Driscoll and kipling among others.