Exports Books

The author attempts to demonstrate the existence of two trade routes between predynastic and early dynastic Egypt and Mesopotamia, through archaeological evidence. This includes shipwreck sites, artifacts and raw materials. The author claims that two different cultures evolved in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia because of their distance between one another. This is a fascinating survey for interested scholars and students of Egyptology and archaeology.

For being a book in a series called "Studies in Nautical Archaeology," this book has very little in it about boats or oceans. It reads like a master's thesis presumably because it was and primarily summarizes others' arguments. It presents nothing in the way of new archaeology and most of the arguments are nicely summed up for the average reader in Midant-Reyenes' "Prehistory of Egypt."

Should you want all of the details as to how the conclusions were arrived at along with some fairly illustrative diagrams and sketches, this book might be of some interest. It also has a good survey of the very un-nautical Narmer Palette.

Contrary to the dustcover (on which, ahem, someone seems to base her reviews in lieu of actually reading the book), only one shipwreck is discussed and even that is mentioned only in the final chapter, the only part of the book that focuses specifically on seafaring.

In From Egypt to Mesopotamia Samuel Mark tries of to analyze the possible cultural and economic runs that between Vth and the IIIrd millennium a.C. tied predinastic Egypt to the mesopotamian cultures. Beginning from the rigorous analysis of the archaeological comparisons in our possession: pottery, raw materials, monkeys and maceheads, boat motifs, cilinder seals, architecture, punctually follows the socio-economic development from a side of the area Siro palestinese and from the other of that Egyptian. The close comparison of the varied cultures (Ubaid, Uruk, Naqada, Badari, Ghassul etc.) furnishes the key of reading to the author to reconstruct the commercial routs through which the relationships were untied between Egypt and Mesopotamia; tracing an exhaustive and fascinating panorama of the Near East. The author also unites to a rigorous archaeological and historical reconstruction, an accessible language to a public not specialized, and the numerous tables and illustrations make the book an irreplaceable tool for whoever wants to deal seriously of the problem.

I found this book to be very informative and a very good read in terms of the global perspective. The questions that come at the end of the chapter makes it easy to remember the important terms.

I purchased this textbook for an online class. Easy to read and has real world/modern day lessons.

Everything was great about the transaction, from the delivery to the Quality, I am very pleased.

Considering the relatively small world of Isetta enthusiasts, it is remarkable that Jan Jensen took the time to write this very detailed and nearly encyclopedic work on restoring the Isetta. His book has made restoring my '59 Isetta possible. Special details, like his re-drawing in English the wiring diagram, were incredibly helpful. He put a great deal of effort and love into this work and I hope he made some money from it.

An absolute must for anyone with an Isetta who plans on getting it in running condition or ready for the concourse.

Having found an 1957 Isetta convertible (which sat for 27 years stored indoors!), the car needed many little (and some not so little) repairs. This book is a great help! Clearly written and very readable. It can become frustrating for me when dealing with things mechanical, and this book helps de-mystify the process. I am having a great deal of enjoyment (most of the time) getting my "little egg" back on the road, and this book is a very helpful resource!

Having recently fallen in love with this tiny bubble-car made by BMW in the late 50s and early 60s, I was surprised to find myself with one, albeit a fixer-upper, in short time. After going to a minicar and microcar meet, the other Isetta owners said: 'You must buy this book!' and 'This book is truly amazing!' I got the book and indeed they were right: this book is astounding. Mr. Jensen offers insightful step-by-step guidance with useful pointers and tips for every facet of restoring the 1958 sliding window export model of 'the rolling egg.' When I bought my Isetta, the seat and inside panels were missing. Imagine my joy when I found, in the book, templates for the panels and a design for a replacement seat. It was almost a spooky, spine-tingling, X-files kind of sensation. It this thoroughness into the restoration process that I found extremely useful. Indeed, this book is truly amazing and, if you are restoring or upkeeping an Isetta, you must own it.

This new edition of Marketing Across Cultures resonates with the great cases and great examples. It's a great stand-alone book for an international marketing course or even a supplimental text for a capstone strategy course. Not only does it gives a 'marketing immersion' but it also gives a 'cultural immersion' to undergrads or MBA students who don't have much out-of-country experience. The authors definitely walk their talk in terms of their professional experiences in the US and abroad.

One of the few marketing texts that discusses in detail the complexities of international and cross-cultural marketing. Thought-provoking. The case studies are interesting and unique, great material for class discussions and debates! A real resource for Master's level courses in marketing and international business. It's good for required reading or as a secondary text, to support a more step-by-step marketing text. The writing is sometimes a bit long-winded and not too easy to read, which is why I didn't give the book five stars.

Our staff includes this publication in our selected list of international trade publications that we recommend to our clients. It presents a clear picture of the many factors involved in marketing products, ideas and concepts in foreign countries. A good reference to keep within reach when planning to introduce a new product or service overseas. John R. Jagoe, Director, Export Institute.

This novel is one of the best in the thriller genre with its likeable heroine and many plot twists and turns. I am always waiting for the next Cork novel to come out!

I was absolutely charmed by this book: the characters, the plot, the sense of forboding, all excellent. You believe you understand what's going on, and then you realize that you don't. It's like trying to watch a card sharp ply his trade. The answer is never what you think. Very good. Very very good!

For mystery buffs who have missed the excellent Claire Francis' dark and subtly nuanced mystery novels can take heart: Vena Cork seems poised to take over this niche, and quite successfully too if her debut novel, "Thorn" is anything to go by.

Rosa Thorn's life, and those of her two children, Danny and Anna, were irrevocably changed when her artist husband, Rob, was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Now, almost a whole year later, Rosa is coping not only with the pain and grief of losing Rob, but with money problems as well. As Rosa and her children try to adjust to lives without Rob, a new school (for the kids) and a new job (for Rosa), the last thing Rosa needed was to have to contend with Anna becoming the apple of the local derelict's eye. And when a young girl is found murdered nearby, Rosa begins to fear for Anna's safety -- especially since she's beginning to sense that a dark and menacing presence is keeping an eye on her family...

"Thorn" proved to be quite the page turner: it was suspenseful and gripping and full of riveting plot twists. I thought that Vena Cork did a rather masterful job of portraying the grief and sense of loss that Rosa, Danny and Anna felt, making the characters accessible and engaging. The manner in which she layered the suspense, building on the tension with each plot twist was wonderfully done as well. All in all, this was a terrific debut novel, worth sitting up and taking notice of. It was absorbing and compelling and possessed coloured the kind of dark, menacing atmosphere you want your mystery novel to have. Definitely an unputdownable.

Here is a book that takes an unabashed look at globalisation and urges the American reader to speed it up! The author focuses on information technology as a pivotal industry. Explaining that the highly skilled aspect and ever improving productivity translates into overall better prospects for the economy.

Outsourcing can lower production costs and thus improve the price competiveness of a company. The text points out that the high value added portions of the production tend to remain in the US. A statistical study is presented of the investments in various parts of IT, and of the diffusion of IT throughout the broader economy. A key point is that the effective use of IT is the most important source of economic gain.

There is also a case study of Australia. Which does not have a significant domestic production of IT. It imports most of its IT hardware and software. Here, IT diffused through the economy and contributed to better labour productivity.

Information technology is an active part of the global economic community, outpacing investment and trade growth for other products and pushing for more globalization than others, also. Its change and transformations are analyzed in Accelerating the Globalization of America: The Role for Information Technology. Executives and students alike will appreciate the focus on how the global IT industry has changed US and oversees interests, from evolving labor requirements and issues to innovative and business structures. Chapters use plenty of statistical citations and analysis in the course of surveying IT productivity, growth, and change. A top pick for international economics and IT courses.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I would have liked to have stories about illnesses also in the book. Also couple mistakes found. But still good value for money.

All of the Aqualog books are excellent value, although they are not particularly cheap. They are full to the brim with first class colour photographs and to reproduce these in a book is an expensive process. Whether they are about Shrimps and other crustaceans, or some other species of fish they are the most comprehensive identification books you can buy. They never become dated because as new fish become available to the aquarist trade the books are updated.

They do not deal with the basics of fish keeping, there are many and varied books that do that. They are in the main a fish identification encyclopaedia and nothing more. But for those aquarists who are particularly interested in a single species they are indispensable.

This is a book that every person interested in entrepreneurial history should read. Directed, among others, by Alfred Chandler, the father of the discipline as it is now, it provides an overview of the different cultural and institutional backgrounds that make possible -or don't- entrepreneurship in many countries.

...I can't argue with thee diligence of the scholars who contributed to this volume.

Readers should be warned. If this is your first attempt at studying industrial history, it is difficult going. It is not really "economics" in the usual way. Nor is it history as you have usually read it.

It is a series of case studies about the industrial development of nations all over the world, aimed at supporting some very controversial theses about what does and what does not work toward that end.

University of California anthropologist, Carol A. Smith, reviews Williams' work in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, "What took place in Central America calls for comparative research. The most useful and original comparisons have been done by Robert Williams, an economist who uses sociological, historical, and ethnographic methods in his research. Robert Williams's Export Agriculture (1986) observes that cotton and cattle production for export expanded hugely in all five countries and led to significant dispossession of peasants everywhere, including Costa Rica. But the five Central American states handled peasant protest quite differently, with both Costa Rica and Honduras carrying out land reform and expanding services while the three other states responded with repression and militarization-which led to war. In States and Social Evolution (1994), Williams examines the social and economic factors that led to two different kinds of states in Central America-the three revolutionary countries being controlled by rigid oligarchies, the other two being led by more open political groups. (Williams) finds an explanation in the social and political relations created by the coffee export economy, the first major post-colonial export in the region, which played a critical role in state formation."

Williams' book deals with the issue of export agriculture in Central America and its repercussions on the economic, ecological, and social well-being of this troubled region. Williams divides the book into three parts, according to the main exports of Latin America. First, Williams deals with cotton's emergence as a cash crop and its positive and negative aspects. Second, Williams deals with cattle and the effects it has had upon the land and the men who till it. This book is interesting in the way it views the cash crops in an economic light and in the ways they affect farmers, large
farmers, and the working class.

The environment has blessed Central America with some of the best land anywhere on earth. Central America's pacific coastal plain, for example, is ideal for growing cotton. The ecological consequences of growing cotton, however, are quite severe. The stress on the soil is severe, considering this crop is not for subsistence. While the law requires that the land be cleared as to protect the land, it is nearly inevitable to prevent the volcanic soils to be vulnerable from wind and water erosion. In the rainy season, however, thunderstorms take their toll on the soil since they make the land prone to flooding. This damage is in addition to the fact that the best lands are used for the production of cotton, while simultaneously polluting the coastal eco-system. The fertility of the soil was short lived in Central America, since after four or five years of consecutive cultivation the light soils of the coastal plain began to lose their natural fertility. This, in turn, led to the need to use chemicals to yield more crops per acre of land.

In regards to cattle, Williams argues that the emerging demand for beef in the United States as a result of the fast food business precipitated the need to make subsistence plots in Latin America land for cattle grazing. For institutions like the World Bank, AID and IADB cattle was seen as a pragmatic, quick way to achieve export led growth. By most accounts, this land was carved from Central American forests. Swidden agriculture (slash and burn) practiced by indigenous allowed for the land to be regenerated after the patch had been abandoned. Under modern methods of forest clearing, the land is almost always relegated to remaining fallow. Modern methods of clearing have allowed for flatlands below the grazing grounds to become subject to flooding. Williams concludes that for those privileged enough to gain access to bank credit, the beef export boom meant a quick way to expand their fortunes, while for those who planted for survival it spelled impending doom.

In this, his latest novel Peter Ackroyd returns to a by now fascinating theme of original forms and repeating patterns in which the individual holds but a brief tenure before relinquishment to the next generation in human kinship. This novel develops a much-loved theme of awe and inspiration in the workings of a tale of ancient beings, cosmic forces, love and madness. To reiterate, repeated patterns over time form a familiar concept to Ackroyd admirers, and can be found in his earlier works, such as Hawksmoor. Where First Light differs from the latter is in the move away from an ancient, pervasive if imperfect evil, depicted in the most sinister way through human sacrifice, as embodied by the fate of Little St Hugh. First Light offers a juxtaposition to the vacuum of evil in Hawksmoor and sacrifice in this latest novel is portrayed in various forms as part of a general, metaphysical good. In comparing Ackroyd's novels, it is worth mentioning the music hall motif, which stands as a literal backdrop to chilling murder in (UK edition) Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, known to USA readers as the less successfully entitled The Trial of Elizabeth Cree etc. Here the music hall is brilliantly reintroduced into this novel as a glorious celebration of poignant and hilarious bathos, with the reminder that its absurd and often grotesque characterisation is more often eclipsed by the antics and eccentricities of the so-called 'ordinary person'. Peter Ackroyd's reputation as an exceptional author whose ability to weave a powerful and haunting tale hardly requires further testimony. Ackroyd however, always demands a good deal of work by the reader and is not in the business of providing glib answers and conclusions. There is always far more to his novels than can be found by a desire for the easy gratification of titillated curiosity and consequently any criticism of his ability as 'whodunit' manque, completely miss the mark

I was not sure what to expect when I picked up this book. The story begins in the present but it is the past that guides and carries us along. Whimsical, darkly humored, mysterious and rambling - an excellent literary work.

The book connects the star Aldebaran with the tomb of an ancient Neolithic race whose ancestors continue to guard the tomb to this day. The Mints, the family that has served as watchers for this hole in the ground, still maintain a close watch. It is too much to give away the plot but needless to say it is all tied up in the end and involves primitive ritual, a casket and a long buried secret. Beautiful writing that is as mesmerizing as it is flawless.