Governments

I read this book with an insider's knowledge based upon the 18 years it took my family and I to recover my father's remains, which laid frozen in a Havana morgue, hidden by Washington and the Kennedy Administration. My father, Thomas "Pete" Ray was one of the American CIA B-26 pilots who gave his life attempting to save the "Bay of Pigs" invasion. My thanks go to Grayston Lynch for telling the true and compelling story of how Jack and Robert Kennedy betrayed so many in the planning and execution of the invasion, then falsely placed the blame for failure on the CIA and the brave men who actually went into harm's way. Washington even went so far as to terrorize the families of the four lost CIA pilots into silence. This book should be required reading for any politician or senior military officer before they are allowed to commit men or women to combat or covert operations.

As a Cuban, I always knew that the U.S. governments theories on the failed invasion were a total and complete cover-up. After reading this book, it shows how correct I was. This book takes you through the story of the doomed 2506 Brigade from the training in Nicaragua to the desprate search for survivors. The book is written by one of the two American CIA agents sent with the Brigade to maintain communications between the Brigade and Washington. The book is devided into three main parts. The first part describes Castros Revolution, the planning for the attack, and the training of the Brigade. The second part describes the actual attacks on the two landing sites, Blue Beach and Red Beach.The final part of the book compares the government explinations for the faliure against what really happend, showing how the Kennedy administration betrayed not only the doomed men of the Brigade, but the American people, for had the Brigad succeded, there would have been no Cuban Missle Crisis, no civil wars in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Colombia, and the Soviet threat would have been eliminated much earlier. I would recomend this book to anyone willing to learn how their government is betraying them.

This book is definitely an eye opener. I remember as a child my father telling me of the cover-ups and distortions created by the Kennedy administration. The real truth about what happened at the Bay of Pigs is finally out. JFK's mistake caused untold missery to millions of people. Not just Cubans, but also Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Colombians, and now Venezuelans. Cubans, and Americans as a whole, should be extemely grateful to Mr. Grayston Lynch for writing this book. I know I am. Thank you, thank you Mr. Lynch.

If you've seen stray dogs in your city and wondered how they live, how they became homeless, and what finally happens to them, this book will tell you. This is the story of dogs on the street and one man who has dedicated his life to saving them.

Randy Grim works every day with homeless dogs in the St. Louis metro area. These are dogs that were once pets, now abandoned by their owners. Or, they were born on the streets and have never known a safe and loving home. By the time Randy finds them in abandoned city warehouses and on busy streets, they have little faith in humans. It is his seemingly impossible job to convince them to trust again. He acclimates them to human behavior so that they can be adopted by responsible families. Randy's non-profit organization, Stray Rescue of St. Louis, is dedicated to saving the lives of dogs on the street.

This is a story of heartbreak and hope. It is the story of dogs who were brutalized and who come to trust again. When we see how Randy's patient work can turn around even the most distrustful dog, we can celebrate that special bond that exists between man and animal. It will make many animal lovers sad because it details struggles of dogs on the street. But it will also serve as inspiration to show the rest of us what can be done!

A fascinating account of one man's crusade to rescue the stray dogs of St. Louis, this book gives us incredible insight into the issues surrounding the stray animal problem in this country. I learned more than I knew there was to know about feral dogs and their place in our society. But this book is not just about dogs - the lessons learned could just as easily be applied to the "capture" and "saving" of all the other strays found in our cities--including those lost & homeless children who have become so commonplace. The behaviors they exhibit are scarily similar to those described by Randy Grim in this book. A gripping tale and one which should be read by anyone interested in the plight of all the strays of the world.

Mr. Grim is a living saint in the mold of Brother Francis. If you believe that a dog dumped by someone who doesn't want him anymore will end up wild and free like a wolf . . . if you think neutering your dog will somehow affect your own manhood . . . if you think your dog should have "just one litter" because "the kids should see the miracle of birth" . . . read this book and then try to sleep at night. Dogs are not wolves in Snoopy costumes, able to return to the wild at a moment's notice. Dumped dogs die slow and terrible deaths, and dogs born on the street live short and wretched lives. They need us. They can't survive without us. Our ancestors made them that way, and passed on to us the responsibility for their life and death. Randy Grim knows this in his guts.

Read this book, and when you stop shivering, call your local animal shelter and ask them what they need most. And if you see a dog wandering alone, look into its eyes. You'll know what I mean when you're done with The Man who Talks to Dogs.

I LOVE YOUR BOOK (Federal Resume Guidebook)!!! It is helping me so much. I was totally dumfounded as to how to do these mysterious KSAs and your book helped me tremendously. Also, I was doing my resume all wrong and after reading your book feel much more confident that I will catch the attention of the federal agencies where I want to work.

-Jacques ...

Kathryn Kraemer Troutman's "Federal Resume Guidebook" is a must have for anyone seeking a position within the Federal Government. Not only does Ms. Troutman review the steps and procedures necessary to obtain employment, but she assist users in the process. This book makes getting a Federal job a breeze. The books "user friendly" approach leaves little territory uncovered. Kudos to Kathy for making the job search much easier. Watch out Federal Government Kathryn's book may just make your forms much more palatable. A must have for those seeking employment within the Federal Government.

Deborah L. Mulligan, Instructional Designer/Curriculum Developer

I purchased a copy of this book about 3 years ago. Besides lots of good guidance for developing resume content, it includes some excellent examples of federal resumes for different "grade" levels. These examples are displayed using effective presentation formats that will help you with layout and "white space". I found them to be extremely helpful in preparing my first federal resume. Until then, I'd developed and used either a very detailed SF-171 or a 2-page commercial resume, but nothing in between.
Using this Guidebook to get started probably saved me half as much time as I'd have otherwise spent in crafting and polishing a new resume. I used my federal resume as part of my application package for a GS-15 position. I was selected for the job from among 30 or so applicants. I think that the form and content of this resume was a strong contributing factor in my selection!

I work in the television broadcast industry and this is a must read if you want to learn about the origins of HDTV, the players who made HDTV a reality, and how the standards for HDTV were defined. The author is an authority on the subject and provides an excellent description of the systems, history, etc. that both technical and business professionals can understand. At my company this has become required reading. I highly recommend this book.

The book strikes from its first page by its fictional style while documenting complexly intrigrated facts about the development of HDTV. The book is simply absorbing; it creates a suspenceful atmosphere comparable to movies such as "The Firm." Truly a great book on the history of HDTV and far ahead on everything I have read one year later (1998) on the same subject matter.

In the early 1980s US broadcasters faced two major headaches spawned by greed and jingoism. Their comfortable, tidy, oligopolistic-and profitable-broadcast world was about to be shaken by the digital revolution, where foes and friends were often indistinguishable. New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Joel Brinkley takes the reader on a roller coaster through boardrooms, bureaucracy, technocracy, and hubris (individual and national) in "Defining Vision." It is a ride worth taking for broadcast students, educators, historians, and international political economists.

Represented by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), radio and television companies considered the broadcast band spectrum their personal property. This largesse suddenly came under assault from the land mobile industry that wanted more spectrum space for a variety of public interest broadcast services such as police, firefighters, ambulance, quick response units, and other emergency services. Broadcasters, too, saw a new threat from across the sea. The Japanese spent $300 million and hundreds of thousands of engineering man-hours developing high definition television (HDTV). NHK unveiled its Muse system in 1986 to US policymakers and consumers. The picture quality was superior to the current analog systems in the United Sates, and Japanese-made monitors were designed to fit the wider formatted movies without the annoying letterbox effect.

Brinkley chronicles the scrimmages involving development of HDTV in the US like a general writing his wartime memoirs-if that general had access to the thinking of his opposition, that is. First the grand alliance-RCA, Zenith, AT&T, Phillips, General Instruments and MIT-had to admit that a victory by any one of them in the costly race to develop HDTV would be a defeat for the others. They were able to convince a willing FCC Advisory Committee that cooperation was possible in building a single system. Committee chairman Richard Wiley's role in HDTV cannot be understated (and Brinkley doesn't). His single-minded pursuit of high definition television as the national (and, it turned out, international) standard most probably resulted in its acceptance.

US broadcasters had worried privately and publicly as well, that the future of television would be dictated by a consortium of Japanese electronics magnates and NHK, the world's second-largest broadcasting company. Across the Atlantic, the European Union was equally concerned, and promised up to a billion dollars to Europeans to come up for a system on its own or else adopt the Japanese HDTV, since the Americans seemed not to be players in the game as the century's ninth decade unfolded. But the European effort never got off paper. US broadcasters at first fretted about a new "yellow peril" that posed as great a threat to them as it did to the automobile industry a decade earlier. Ever opportunistic, however, broadcasters found the Japanese an unlikely ally in their fight to snatch the unused frequencies from land mobile companies. HDTV, as the Muse system showed, required additional bandwidth space. Obviously, they reasoned, Congress and the FCC could not allocate precious broadcast spectrum space to land mobile users when they, the "rightful frequency heirs," needed the frequencies for HDTV.

At the same time, MIT's Nicholas Negroponte, who Brinkley treats somewhat derisively, was telling anyone who would listen that "HDTV had to be digital," not analog, which would allow for signal compression that would fit into existing frequencies. One naysayer echoed a common broadcast engineering complaint at the time: "we will have digital HDTV when we have anti-gravitation machines." Broadcast engineers at the major manufacturers nodded in agreement: digital high definition television technologically could not be done. The NAB, in its attempt to protect its space band largesse, inadvertently kicked off a race to develop HDTV in the United States that took on the trappings of a crusade to "rescue" the future of television in the United States from the hands of foreign interests. Along the way, General Instruments research engineer Woo Paik invented digital television (because, as a non-broadcast engineer, he didn't know that "it was impossible").

HDTV uses a compressed digital broadcast signal that not only remained within a single frequency but allowed broadcasters additional capacity to sell secondary services such as pager services, email, Internet connections, digital music, and pay-per-view movies. With such an entrée to new revenue flows, the reader would be surprised to learn the depth of NAB's animus to HDTV. Simply put, broadcasters used the HDTV concept to wrest away additional public airwaves spectra and then, among themselves, grumbled that they were unwilling to invest in new high definition cameras, monitors, and other equipment that would allow them to broadcast signals in both progressive scan (favored by the computer programming and manufacturing sector) and interlaced (favored by broadcasters) modes. Another opponent of a high definition television standard was the fledgling computer manufacturing industry in the mid-1990s, which didn't want the additional expense of adding interlacing decoding to what essentially was a dedicated proscan system.

After seven years of ups and downs in a process that often threatened to sputter, splinter, and spin totally out of control, HDTV in a digital form arrived in the US shortly after Thanksgiving in 1997. Despite all predictions to the contrary, the HDTV "turkey" arrived fully stuffed with enough goodies to ease its transition into the marketplace. The result was acceptance of the Americanized international standard by the European Union and the final, if not sad, acknowledgment by NHK that its analog Muse system was outmoded before it even got much beyond a toehold in its native land.

In "Defining Vision," Brinkley has crafted a highly readable, almost techno-mystery story with well-defined characters: heroes, villains, and rascals alike. At times he seems to get into the heads of the key players, which he explains as a literary device borne from extensive interviews with the principals who told him what they were thinking at the time. The effect rounds the edges of what could have been a highly technical, heuristic, and sloggish recitation of engineering reports, public hearings, and dreary diary entries from the participants. To his credit, the author explains his process to readers in an epilogue, thus enhancing the book's credibility. Furthermore, in this paperback edition, the author has updated and expanded several sections over the hardcover version, including an appendix and FAQ that are instructional.

I had the pleasure of visiting with Raymond last week in Montana,and hearing him tell some of the stories that were not in the book was an interesting evening.

Even though I have lived in La. all of my life so many of the stories in the book I had never heard!Raymond brought them all to life.

Strother, a Texas bred Democrat consultant who served as a mentor to better known figures such as James Carville, recounts his experiences in the rough and tumble world of politics. In many hands, this could have been a very factual, dry and boring book. Luckily for the reader, Strother is an uproarious storyteller.

The son of a fervent union man in Port Arthur, Texas, Strother more or less falls into the political consulting business by default. He begins his career in Louisana, a hotbed of corruption and questionable ethics. Thru his journey, we relive his often painful and hilarious campaign experiences with country singer Jimmie Davis, Gary Hart and Bill Clinton.

Current politics are dirty business and not for the weak of heart. Idealists are often rudely discarded before they even realize what's happened. Strother considers himself a man of integrity in a profession that increasingly looks at such a trait as a weakness. He not only has to deal with Republican adversaries but underhanded tactics by members of his own party. Strother is honest in his analysis of his work and colleagues and spares no one including other Democrats who employed dirty tricks against his firm.

No matter what side your political beliefs fall, this is a good read if you want to understand how politics work behind the scenes.

Strother helped create the modern day political consultants. And in an age of "up by the bootstraps American story" his is solid. He came far fast.

This entertaining book cuts to the quick and tells the story of a very hidden industry. Media consultants bring you the leaders of the free world and you have no idea who they are. Second rate actors in Hollywood movies that don't matter a lick to mankind are heralded in pop magazines. But this is a look into a world that matters.

Read it and you'll understand much more about the government around you. And you'll laugh a gooo bit while learning.

I have an earlier book written by this author entitled, "Activity-based Cost Management, Making It Work" that was written during earlier days of implementing activity-based costing. Cokins' new book, while it addresses activity-based functionality for government, also presents some "matured" thinking and advice on ABC/M which I found to be extremely helpful in validating some of my own observations and learnings from implementing ABC/M. For a newcomer to ABC/M, the book presents the case for why government entities can profit from using ABC/M, how to get an implementation going, critical factors for success and some case studies of actual government implementations. But, it also gets into more advanced applications such as using ABC/M to support performance measurement, supply chain management, and budgeting. These chapters are not as easily digested, but they are a rich source of reference for those planning to broaden the use of activity-based cost/management.

Gary Cokins does an excellent job explaining Activity Based Costing and Activity Based Management from beginning to end. By reading the first chapter alone, one can tell he is an expert in his field. He begins explaining the subject matter with the basics and continues through using an easy to follow logic. For public sector organizations that are considering ABC/M, or already using it, this book is a master guide for its methodology. It has very helpful charts which the author uses in his explanation of the material, making it easy for the reader to follow.

I have spent over 30 years in government, and the one aspect always apparent is that the government is always trying to improve performance with fewer resources, and therefore recognizes the need for activity based costing. This book is, by far, the leading reference to refer to for guidance on how to implement ABC/M. The reader does not have to be a cost accountant to comprehend the methodology or technique used to implement ABC/M. The author cites actual cases in the public sector where federal or local agencies have implemented this technique and the successes made. He begins with the issue or problem and cites the solution, the model structure used, the results, and the lessons learned. These actual case examples help show how ABC/M can resolve problems in the real world.

Overall, I found this book to be an excellent resource in its field, as it is easily understood, yet comprehensive. I strongly recommend it to any government manager that wants to help their organization excel.

Activity based cost management is increasingly taking hold in government and is helping many organizations make dramatic improvements in their understanding of costs. Gary Cokins, a widely respected cost management craftsman and teacher, has made an outstanding contribution to the advancement cost management in his book "Activity-Based Cost Management in Government." He does a great job covering a wide range cost topics in a clear and coherent manner; and he consistently reinforces - through relevant concepts, examples and quotations - the pragmatic value of cost information to support fact based decision making.

The Chaco Meridian is strictly for those already familiar with studies and locations in Southwestern archaeology. The author's theory about a common meridian linking Chaco and Aztec (N.M.) and Casas Grandes (Mexico) is interesting and well-argued, but far-fetched.
The book is cluttered with hundreds of references placed in middle of the text, which make for choppy reading. Many of the references are to Dr. Lekson's own work.
Four Corners archaeology has been studied by many, many scientists for many, many years. The result is a cloud of literature which turns over stone after stone; potsherd after potsherd, attempting to justify the cost of each new study. There is lots of dust, not much pure light.
Dr. Lekson raises more dust, pointing out the coincidence of three major sites on (almost) the same meridian. Hundreds of other sites don't line up with anything. One can connect any two sites with a straight line. Extended far enough, the line will probably strike something else. My hometown is on almost the same meridian as Oklahoma City and Waco. So?
To his credit, Dr. Lekson gently slams the fetish of Chaco astro-archaeology and its limitless imagined alignments of doorways and rocks with certain stars on certain nights. Most of the "alignments" are pure Hohokam. The bend of a creek (we don't have mountains around here) viewed from my attic window lines up perfectly with sunrise on May 17. You have to stand on a chair in just the right spot to make everything line up. Is this a magic place, or what?
I'd like to give Dr. Lekson five stars for this clever work, but it grinds too fine.

Lekson, an expert on Southwestern archaeology, presents a provocative thesis about the civilization that produced the great houses in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon. He proposes that Chaco Canyon was one of three successive capitals of a politically integrated region. According to Lekson, a ruling elite emerged at Chaco and perpetuated itself by moving a ceremonial city along Chaco's meridian. Lekson writes in an engaging and often deliberately provocative style. This is as fun as serious archaeology gets, though Lekson sometimes repeats his points. The book is well illustrated with diagrams and black and white photographs.

Steve Lekson has created a book of immense power and importance that is both a challenge to current archaeological thinking and a pleasure to read! If Lekson's precepts are correct, then a major new chapter in Southwestern archaeology has just opened. Although I must disagree with many of his view points (I am "a remarkably, even perverse" (p.45) archaeologist and one of the perpetrators of the "Chaco is a Dairy Queen Outlier" bumper stickers (p.28), the book challenges even my Mesa Verdean sensabilities (Steve once called me a "like-minded heritic" so I expect that he would expect me to disagree with him along the line, as heretics do!). In short, I am not a Chacoanist and am sceptical of all things Chaco. Yet reading Lekson's new work is stimulating, and almost made a believer out of a stodgy old Mesa Verdean like me! Highly recommended, useful, energetic, and MAYBE correct!

what's amazing to me is how much and how little American culture has changed in almost three centuries.

If you want to understand where America is going, then it's essential to understand where America has been, and this book, even more than the Federalist papers, will show you that.

Anyone wishing to better understand how it is that America achieved it's current position in the world must read this book. De Tocqueville's seminal work rings true today and gives a great perspective on our past, present and future. Everything that has ever happened in America's relatively short history, up to and including our most recent presidential election and the attacks of September 11th are better understood after reading this timeless classic.

This book is a work of scope and insight that is still quoted and referred to often. Although written in the 1800s it still speaks to us about what we were with a clarity and accuracy that makes it an essential if you care about the early development of this country. It has past the test of time and may be more important now then it ever was. READ IT.

Unlike most books written about Ruby Ridge and Waco, this book is well written and straightforward, free of the extremist polemics that fill other accounts. It also makes a good, suspenseful read.

"Every Knee Shall Bow" by Jess Walter is the definitive statement of the events that transpired on Ruby Ridge between the Weaver family and the federal government. The author was one of the many journalists who covered the story as it unfolded. He got a bird's eye view of a lot of things that went on during the standoff, although most of it being secondary to the main events.

Walter takes a look not only at what happened on the mountain but also at the backgrounds of Randy and Vicki Weaver and the subsequent legal proceedings against Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris. While most readers will be drawn to this book for the Ruby Ridge incidents, I'd be willing to bet that most will be more riveted by the court room proceedings than the other two parts of the book.

Walter doesn't draw too many conclusions in the book. He seems to decide two things: 1) the Weavers were anti-government paranoids and 2) the government royally ... up this case thereby doing nothing to dissuade the Weavers from their paranoia. He seems to believe that the Weavers were not intent upon provoking a standoff with the feds; that they believed they didn't have to provoke one and that it would just show up at their doorstep.

This account of what happened is none too flattering of anyone involved in the standoff. There is much second guessing of the government's overreaction to a man who was essentially wanted on a failure to appear charge. You expect the government to be the ones to show good judgement in a situation like this and they blew it by a wide margin.

"Every Knee Shall Bow" is the only book you need to get both sides of what happened on the mountain. Both the Weavers' and the feds' sides are well presented. Walter doesn't play favorites with the stories; although, he seems to believe the Weavers' account of what transpired more than the government's.

This is a well written book. It is as exciting and easy to read as a novel. All sides of the controversy get a fair hearing. The beliefs of the Weavers, the White Separtist Movement, Christian Identity and others involved in this controversy are explained. The author definately had his point of view but covered all points of view fairly.

This book is filled with interesting facts as well as many interesting theories (all very reasonably analyzed by the author). And because it is written as a dialogue between the author and God, it is a pleasure to read.

The chapters detailing the relationship between Christianity and pagan religions should be essential reading for every believer. The case against Christianity couldn't be made more obvious than it is here. Anyone who reads these chapters and doesn't at least begin to wonder is beyond hope.

Joseph's book was the first one I read when I was questioning Christianity. Needless to say, it provoked me to not only read other books, but started me on a road I never dreamed I would be on. A book of this proportion carries a lot of weight, and unfortunately, responsibility. I say responsibility not because I feel he has an obligation to you, I, or anyone else, but at the same time, his words are so provoking, that in a sense, there is responsibility on the reader's part to exam what we will learn from them. Joseph does a phenomenal job in presenting his case concerning many aspects of Christianity. He is astute, easy to read, and very well researched. The topics in the book hit hard and ruthless in some areas. At a few points I was afraid he came across as an angry, bitter, atheist. Atheism is anything but that, and I see now the areas in question were simply tougher issues we need to deal with.

Whether you accept Joseph's view or not, I feel this book is an excellent look at why many do not accept Christianity in any form. The issues are very real, and the presentation is very smooth. If you need a look into the logical mind of those who do not accept Christianity at face value, then this is an excellent, unsung hero for the part. I encourage you to explore your beliefs.

His take on the American religious types like the JW, Mormons, SDA's are excellent. Sometimes people simply need to be given digestible simple examples that speak volumes and not a lengthy dissertation. The author does this well. And I like that he uses the term superstition well.

Those who hold onto religious beliefs because of fear of being ostracized, or because they need to "belong" or because this is the way it has always been will feel some pain when they read the book. The same way an alcoholic hates to be told he is an addict. In fact that's what this book basically points out. Addicts who are afraid to be healthy.