Leader

When this book was released in 1997, I was just beginning to explore how crafting experimental poetry within formal structures could help me to find nuances not been available to me before within my poetic voice. Mary Leader became for me a far-off mentor.

Though I've never met her, I've returned to her work time and time again, and I continue to find it compelling and lyrical, her images almost tangible. Like a lovely, durable, hand-stitched quilt, there is a utility to these poems for me -- utility that is translated though craft, and craft that is a vehicle for art.

Lovely and musical, honest and nonpretentious, accomplished and enduring -- Mary Leader's poems show her ability to listen to the world with a finely tuned ear and re-create that experience with grace and skill.

The poems are formally experimental, which I often find intellectually engaging but less compelling emotionally. Red Signature conveys an uncommon warmth. I like thinking about these poems, but also just reading them, feeling with them.

School Business Partnerships are the wave of future successful public school education. No longer can public schools be expected to do the job of educating our youth by themselves. It is going to take a collaborative effort between business and education to develop partnerships that will best serve the communities needs. By working together, communities will become stronger and be able to provide the best possible education for their youth that is possible. This book provides the blueprint for the development of partnerships - is an easy read - and provides real samples of pathways to follow. Good Job!!

This book does a really great job of emphasizing relationships between schools and businesses to help students. I am impressed that the authors understand the importance of such partnerships being student-centered rather than adult centered.

Plus they have lots of practical suggestions for schools, PTA's, businesses, and other organizations for getting started. It's great to see this book on the market. Very unique and useful!

I want to kkow how as a servan leaders to implementing the christian leadership

This very small book takes only and hour or two to read yet a lifetime to digest. Mr. Greenleaf's compelling insight into the essence of true leadership based on the servant perspective shows how true leaders lead from the front...and the back.

The reader will quickly grasp the servant leader model at work in the true great leaders of the 20th century such as Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi. These people who made enormous differences in their own country and the world at large through leading by service.

The book is not in any way a religious treatise but a thought provoking, energizing investigation into what may be the only leadership paradigm that the upcoming generation will respond to.

To say that this is a detailed and comprehensive book would be an understatement. You do not just read this book you study it like a university text book. There must be 1000 foot notes and references.

This book contains an accurate and comprehensive overview of the armed forces and what the UN and US might face in any conflict. It is all described in detail, i.e.: navy, army, air force, command structure, paramilitary, WMD's, missiles, and more.

Highly recommended. Full of information but easy to read.

Jack in Toronto

Joseph Bermudez is the best expert on North Korea's military and missile programs. I first saw his previous book, North Korean Special Forces(NKSF), in a classified cover on the desk of south Korean intelligence analysts.

His new book goes into even greater depth and covers the makeup, motivation, and enviroment that has created and maintained arguably the largest deployed combat force in the world.

The book is well written. The graphics are excellent, as are references to supporting documents.

This book is a must for anyone interested in knowing more about the security risks and challenges facing Japan, Korea, China, Russia and the United States.

Excellent book with short insights into dealing with mediocre teacher. Any administrator who would like practical and up date insight on how to make teachers better teachers should read this book.

I loved reading this book for all it taught me and for all the important things it reminded me of. . . . Arguing passionately and convincingly that supervisors must have competence, conviction, and control, the authors provide the information and the tools supervisors need to help teachers mired in mediocrity, that sometimes discouragingly long stretch of the continuum between the incompetent and the skillful. Absent an uncommon talent for denial, you cannot read this book without being transformed as a supervisor.

"What is ministry?" That is the question Ray Anderson uses to begin his book, The Soul of Ministry. From that simple beginning flows Andersons profound insights into ministry starting with "Ministry As Theological Task".

The first four chapters of the book build the theoretical base for the rest of the book. The reader is introduced at this early point to the specialized vocabulary of Anderson's theology of ministry: Inner logic, praxis, telos, poiesis, discernment, and theological antecedent. Not that these are new terms, but Anderson refines them in a way that allows us to see an important point: "All ministry is God's ministry from the very beginning."

Ray Anderson writes with great passion. His theology is very pastoral and empowering. I would plead with all that find themselves in ministry to read this book. A great balance is struck between practical applicable ministry and though streching theology.

Samuel Brengel, a great Salvation Army evangelist wrote: "The final estimate of men shows that history cares not an iota for the rank or title a man has borne, or the office he has held, but only the quality of his deeds and the character of his mind and heart." Never has a man proved this more true than Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Larry J. Michael reminds us that Spurgeon decided against formal theological education and ordination early in his ministry. Yet this man who rejected titles such as Reverend and called human ordination, "empty hands on empty heads," has been given the title of Prince of Preachers by the generations that have followed him.

Many of of our readers will probably ask, "Do we really need another book about Spurgeon?" Once you read Spurgeon on Leadership, you will certainly be thankful that Larry Michael believed there was such a need. This is not a biography but rather a study in the leadership style of the most influential Baptist in the last two hundred years.

The first twelve chapters define the characteristics of Spurgeon's leadership style that set him apart from the crowd. Those characteristics are:

The last two chapters focus on current events in Spurgeon's world and ours and how Christian leadership can respond to those challenges.

Spurgeon On Leadership is a highly practical book. Each chapter ends with a list of leadership lessons we can learn from Spurgeon. For example in the chapter on creativity we are given this leadership lesson: "The message of the gospel does not change, but the manner of its presentation may be adapted according to the situation. Spurgeon said, "I am not very scrupulous about the means I use for doing good ... I would preach standing on my head, if I thought I could convert your souls." (p. 151)

Everyone can benefit from this book. Whether you are an official leader in your church or sit on the back row of your Sunday School class there is much to learn here. You will be surprised by some of the things you learn about Spurgeon and yourself along the way.

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Spurgeon On Leadership is that we are reminded of what God wants to do with each of us. Our thanks go out to Dr. Michael for encouraging us to think big thoughts about God and for His work. Spurgeon refused to be forced into other people's boxes and so should we! Let us be what God wants us to be and do it with the gusto that Charles H. Spurgeon did.

Samuel Brengel, a great Salvation Army evangelist wrote: "The final estimate of men shows that history cares not an iota for the rank or title a man has borne, or the office he has held, but only the quality of his deeds and the character of his mind and heart." Never has a man proved this more true than Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Larry J. Michael reminds us that Spurgeon decided against formal theological education and ordination early in his ministry. Yet this man who rejected titles such as Reverend and called human ordination, "empty hands on empty heads," has been given the title of Prince of Preachers by the generations that have followed him.

Many of of our readers will probably ask, "Do we really need another book about Spurgeon?" Once you read Spurgeon on Leadership, you will certainly be thankful that Larry Michael believed there was such a need. This is not a biography but rather a study in the leadership style of the most influential Baptist in the last two hundred years.

The first twelve chapters define the characteristics of Spurgeon's leadership style that set him apart from the crowd.
The last two chapters focus on current events in Spurgeon's world and ours and how Christian leadership can respond to those challenges.

Spurgeon On Leadership is a highly practical book. Each chapter ends with a list of leadership lessons we can learn from Spurgeon. For example in the chapter on creativity we are given this leadership lesson: "The message of the gospel does not change, but the manner of its presentation may be adapted according to the situation. Spurgeon said, "I am not very scrupulous about the means I use for doing good ... I would preach standing on my head, if I thought I could convert your souls." (p. 151)

Everyone can benefit from this book. Whether you are an official leader in your church or sit on the back row of your Sunday School class there is much to learn here. You will be surprised by some of the things you learn about Spurgeon and yourself along the way.

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Spurgeon On Leadership is that we are reminded of what God wants to do with each of us. Our thanks go out to Dr. Michael for encouraging us to think big thoughts about God and for His work. Spurgeon refused to be forced into other people's boxes and so should we! Let us be what God wants us to be and do it with the gusto that Charles H. Spurgeon did.

This program has done so much for me in addition to weight loss. I have lost 63 pounds so far and am in the 4th book. More than the weight loss, it has caused me to draw closer to the Lord than I ever have before. What a wonderful surprise!

Step Forward is not for anyone who wants a quick fix without working for it. This is an excellent book (and series) and is the only one I know of that approaches the emotional issues that cause us to overeat, as well as the physical and the spiritual. This book can stand alone for a 12 week study or can be used in the series for a year long study. I have completed this series several times and have kept my weight off. I have tried many weight loss programs and this one is the best.

In another sterling volume of the Leaders in Action series, Stephen Mansfield here outlines the life and character of Booker T. Washington. In vivacious voice and moving magniloquence, Mansfield traces Washington's path from slavery to his founding of Tuskegee Institute. He shows the difficulties Washington surpassed in reaching his goals, and the principles that helped him make it. In the words of Washington, "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succed." By this standard, Booker T. Washington was an astonishingly successful man.

Washington wrote his own autobiography, _Up From Slavery_, which must certainly not be neglected. But Mansfield's biography is also a criticial read because he includes facts that the autobiographer was too modest to mention, and he highlights wonderful aspects of Washington's character that humility prevented him from including. This biography doesn't contain the wonderful self-analysis and insight of Booker himself - but it does contain all the benefits of a third person account.

One thing I really appreciated about this book was its terrific analysis of slavery and inter-race reconciliation. Expounding Booker's opinion, Mansfield blames both whites and blacks for the problems that cropped up after the Civil War. Whites needed to repent of their brutal treatment of slaves and actually begin considering blacks more than mere animals; and blacks needed to repent of their spirit of bitterness toward their white enslavers, and begin working hard and leaving no excuse for disrespect of blacks. Too many books on reconciliation have practically advocated bitterness, hatred, and laziness when what is really needed is Washington's outlook of forgiveness and hard work. This book offers relief from such pride.

To wrap up, this is a great biography. Good history, good style, and good content. Buy it.

Then Darkness Fled is a celebration of the life of Booker T. Washinghton and tells of a man who dined with heads of state and became the first Afro-American to receive honorary degrees from Harvard and Dartmouth. Chapters survey both his achievements and his life in this lively coverage.

This is one in a series of "Strategy & Business" books from Booz-Allen & Hamilton, published by Jossey-Bass. All are first-rate and well-worth checking out. In this book, Joel Kurtzman edits a series of in-depth interviews of 12 of the most influential thought leaders during the last decade. Obviously, some will quibble with the number and/or with specific selections. However, although several may be unfamiliar to you, after you read the interviews I think you will agree with me that all 12 are eminently worthy. They are: Charles Handy, Minoru Makihara, Keshub Mahindra, C.K. Prahalad, John Kao, Paul M. Romer, Stan Shih, Norbert Walter, John T. Chambers, Warren Bennis, Gary Hamel, and Jean-Rene Fourtou. In the Foreword, Brian N. Dickie (president and COO, Booz-Allen & Hamilton) suggests that "the new agenda" for CEOs and their top[ teams (managing for growth, business process redesign for the next generation, and new organization structures) and then suggests that "the winners will be those CEOs who can integrate the new agenda with their own clear vision while simplifying the execution challenge and inspiring their organizations to perform beyond expectations." It is from this perspective that Kurtzman then provides the 12 interviews. None of them fully addresses all of the issues but together, the CEOs provide insights of substantial value to decision-makers at all levels of organizational configuration. Here are three brief excerpts, obviously taken out of context but nonetheless thought-provoking:

"With people scattered around the world, you really have to let them be on their own. The assignments are often difficult and you need them for specific purposes. Those purposes may change. That means you have to run the organization on the basis of professionalism and trust -- and subsidiarity." Charles Handy, Professor, London Business School, and author of The Age of Unreason and The Age of Paradox

"The management of creativity is more intimate [than the traditional management skill set that is appropriate to a large, complex industrial-era organization]. By that I mean that it deals with an individual's personal, psychological landscape. It deals with the way you create relationships. It deals with creating an atmosphere and environment that support the creative process. As a result, it is a management skill set that is inherently psychological and that encourages desired outcomes rather than demands those outcomes." John Kao, Harvard Business School, and author of Jamming

"What we have to do is work out a balance between tolerating some monopolies and monopoly profits -- since that's how we motivate people to discover new recipes -- with competition to keep prices low and distribute products widely. We encourage this competition by granting property rights that are partial or incomplete. In practice, what this means is that while in the physical economy with diminishing returns there are perfect prices, in the knowledge economy with its increasing returns there are no perfect prices." Paul M. Romer, Stanford Business School

Kurtzman has exceptional skills as both interviewer and editor, framing initial questions and then adjusting smoothly during the rigorous but informal exchange of responses. He guides each "thought leader" without imposing any of his own opinions. The result is that the reader is provided with direct access to how each of the 12 thinks as well as what each has to share about a given issue. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out the other volumes in the "Strategy & Business" series from Booz-Allen & Hamilton. I also highly recommend Strategy + Business magazine of which Kurtzman served as editor-in-chief.

This work presents interviews with twelve leading thinkers in business and academia on a very wide range of subjects relating to: issues of business strategy, growth and human resources: the new social contract among companies, employees and shareholders; and the way in which society is changing. This is a highly interesting collection of the ideas and insights of some of the brightest people around. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, Stern & Associates, author of Stern's Sourcefinder The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and Stern's Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder.