Fund-of-funds Books

This is one of the best books I have ever seen on land use planning and growth management. It is filled with color photos of conventional(i.e. bad) development and its alternatives. The book provides great data and arguments for improving the quality of new development.

This is a must-read book for serious fundraisers -- and maybe a watershed book for many. Once you've read the well-documented findings in Building Donor Loyalty, you might well view your existing fundraising program with dismay. It turned my thinking inside out.

Poor donor retention is the skeleton in the closet for many, maybe most, fundraising programs. Maybe 70% of first-time donors never make a second gift. There are excellent reasons why new donors aren't especially loyal, as this book reveals with original research.

Charities invest huge amounts of money in their acquisition machines; but almost nothing in keeping those donors once they've been acquired. The waste is incalculable. Not just because of needless overspending on acquisition, but because charities lose the LTV (the lifetime value) of so many donors who might have been retained with a bit more effort.

Raise more money. Read Building Donor Loyalty as soon as possible.

I read this book some years ago on the recommendation of some online friends. I must say if you are a mutual fund investor and want to get better at it, this is a great book to learn from. Some of the benchmarks are dated but the general ideas are not. Additionally, the section on appropriate investment selections based on economic cycles is itself worth the purchase of the book.

Happy investing.

This new edition of The Politics of Bureaucracy brings a classic work in public choice back in print. Better still, this edition combines The Politics of Bureaucracy with Tullock's "Economic Hierarchies, Organization, and the Structure of Production".

The Politics of Bureaucracy is an underrated and wrongly ignored classic. Most of the modern literature on bureaucracies focuses on "principal-agent problems". According to Tullock an authority faces two problems with their subordinates "communicating his desires and seeing that these are carried out". The latter of these problems is the principal-agent problem. The former is the central focus of this book.

Modern social democratic states function through large centralized bureaucracies. The communication problems of such organizations are immense, but the solution to this problem is simple and fairly obvious. Many modern functions of government should be shifted from the Federal level to the local level. Switzerland serves as a good example of how government should work (see also Eleanor Ostrom's "Governing the Commons"). We should avoid highly centralized welfare/regulatory bureaucracies, such as those that exist in Sweden, France, Germany, and to a lesser extent the United States.

I was lucky enough to read this book as part of a class taught by Tullock himself. While few others can learn about the information problems of bureaucracy this way, anyone can read this book on their own (there is a recent reprint). The Politics of Bureaucracy should be required reading for political science students. This book also goes well with "Bureaucracy" by Ludwig von Mises and "The Road to Serfdom" by FA Hayek. Together, these three books hit at the core of the problems with public organizations. Unfortunately, these three books get little attention from Economists and even less from Political Scientists. One can only hope that there will be a resurgence of interest in great book.

Economic Hierarchies, Organization, and the Structure of Production carries Tullock's analysis of Bureaucracy further. As Tullock notes, his ideas on organization are not fully integrated into the appropriate literature. This is an unfortunate fact, but the reprinting of these books facilitates the dissemination of Tullock's ideas.

I am a Girl Scout leader and I am always looking for craft books with nice craft items and have easy to follow instructions. I borrow this book from the library and was quite impressed. This book has wonderfull picture instructions for all their crafts. A child of 7 years and up would be able to follow most of the instructions without the help of an adult. The basic skills they teach can be built on to higher levels of crafting. They do a webbing project which is good for beginning sewing, easy and colorful cross stitch, simple doll making, beginning knitting (the best instructions I have seen for beginner), marble paper, printing patterns, and other paper crafts. I am impress enough to purchase one for my collection.

Elections are the foundation of any democracy, and the foundation of any free country. "Campaign and Election Reform" looks at voting and the issues surrounding it in the modern era. Debating the use of electronics and how computers can be fallible, "Campaign and Election Reform" explores ways to make rigging foolproof so that elections are more honest. Widening its scope beyond American democracy, "Campaign and Election Reform" examines the errors and innovations different countries have made, and is highly recommended for anyone who wants to better understand democracy.

I had the pleasure of studying political economy with Professor Schneider as an undergraduate during the final stages of this book's production. Although I do not own a copy, I have read it in manuscript form. Prof. Schneider's book first relates the decline in American productivity over the past few decades to the lack of social mechanisms to support productivity growth. He then goes on to demonstrate how the traditional Democratic support base is eroding as the Democratic party switches its focus from providing these social mechanisms to satisfying special interests.

The book is clearly written, and his point is very well argued, drawing examples from issues ranging from national defense to public education and childcare. I highly suggest this to anyone, of any political affiliation, who is interested in a troubling yet gripping thesis about why the Democratic party is losing its once dominant power in American politics.

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Interestingly, I wrote this review prior to the November 2002 elections. Prof. Schneider's thesis, also developed and published well prior to 2002, is almost a perfect fit to what many pundits and critics claim to be the reason for the Democrat's inability to pickup midterm seats. This book has turned out to be particularly prescient in that respect.

Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.

Received in excellent condition and on time.

This is a comprehensive handbook without being so overwhelming that you never finish it. The wisdom is from the seasoned careers of professional officers in college and university fund raising, yet translated well for the lay person.