Leader

This book is an easy and effective way to prepare for the Toefl test. It offers a step-by-step program that helps you improve not only your test-taking strategies, but also your language skills. At first I was afraid that this guide only offers exercises and practice tests like many other test guides. But I was amazed that it also includes forty-eight wonderful "mini lessons" that taught me essential knowledge and information needed for the test. There are three complete practice tests which helped me analyze my weaknesses and become familiar with the format of the actual test. The exercises of the Listening Comprehension part also have tapes that accompany the book. And it helped me a lot because it's like taking an actual test without all the tension and stress. I became more familiar and comfortable with the test format. Before I bought this book, I had no clue how to prepare for the Toefl test. But as I went further into it, I could feel the progress that I have made. When I finished the three practice tests, I got a pretty good score and I was very glad that I had chosen this book.

I run an educational advising center where we also administer TOEFL tests, and "Peterson's TOEFL Success 2001" is the most popular TOEFL preparation product we have. Students often report increases in their previous scores after using this book and cassettes.

This book was very easy to read and understand. Coming from a teaching background, and not knowing anything about policy making, this book was a true education. I used it in my grad class, and every student commented on the ease of understanding and the interest in the text. This is a must buy if you want to learn anything about education, teaching or being an administrator!

An excellent source of information for the layperson or serious student of American education systems. Dr. Fowler explains in great detail a variety of such substantive areas as the meaning of policy; power and education; a discussion of the policy environment; some types of political systems and culture; ideological and value systems; who sets the stage in the making of education policy; the various stages of the policy process and so forth. Enjoyable! Thorough! Substantive!

Prayer Shield covers the topic of personal intercession.. e.g. of those who are commited to pray for and cover an individual (such as a pastor or the leader of a ministry) in prayer. It begins by sharing some true stories of the power of prayer, and also develops what the Bible teaches on the subject of intercession and prayer partners.

The second chapter explores intercessors from every angle.. I feel that one of the most powerful insights in the book is the concept of different types of prayer assignments, and how to determine which type you fit into as an intercessor. E.g., some people specialize in thoroughly praying a request through, and they desire details and feedback and keep prayer lists and prayer journals detailing their requests and how/when God answered them. Others tend to be more prophetic in nature. They find it hard to take requests from people and do not like to keep lists.. they prefer to come before the Lord and get their prayer assignment directly from Him. You need to give lots of details and feedback to those who specialize in praying a request through, but you don't want to bog a prophetic intercessor down with too many specific details and requests. Peter identifies 4 types of intercessors. The book help leaders to determine which prayer-type their intercessors are so they can give them prayer information/requests in a manner that works best for them.

Subsequent chapters develop why pastors and leaders need personal intercession, and how they can begin developing and mobalizing personal intercessors. It teaches leaders how to recieve intercession and how to develop relationship with their intercessors and how to supply them with the information they need to be effctive.

(A personal note.. I used to be one of Peter and Doris Wagner's personal intercessors, and I can attest that they live what they teach in this book.. and as an intercessor, I found their system very workable.)

A seminal book on personal intercession. I've used Prayer Shield as a textbook, and I've sent copies to several ministers to help them initiate prayer support for their own ministry.

The concept of intercession being one of the gifts of the Spirit is ground breaking. Wagner's treatise on the different functions of intercession is vital for any serious prayer ministry.

The bottom line of this book is if a pastor fails in ministry the congregation needs only to look at their amount (or lack) of prayer support to answer the inevitable question of "Why?"

During my research for information on the the Civil War unit, 112th NY Vol. Inf. This book was suggested to me by a Park Historian. This book provides a lot of information on the Suffolk Siege, all in one central location. I would highly suggest it to any one needing information on both Union and Confederate operations during this period.

If you want to know about the Suffolk campaign, this is the book to read. Well researched and documented, it covers in detail, a campaign that has been overlooked, even neglected by history due to the actions around Chancellorsville. It also dispels another myth about General Longstreet being slow to respond in returning to General Lee. Historians have overlooked this campaign and have consistently described it as another failure on General Longstreet's attempt at independent command. Mr. Cormier has done an excellent job in explaining the facts as well as the actions of a very important and necessary action durning the war between the states.

I read the book for my sociology class and I will say that I am impressed by it. It is written very well and Huang Shu-min did a great job conveying the changes in Lin Village after the Chinese Communist Party takes over CHina. The book can be challenging to people, especially those who are forced to read it. An I feel you have to have an interst of Asia to actually get into the book. So if you do have this intrest, I recomend that you buy it.

An outstanding book that lets you see how communism worked in this village to transform the way of life. Mr. Shu-min was an American professor who had permission to spend time in this village. He made friends with the Man who was in charge, who had been born in 1946 a few short years before the communists won out. Change in village really started with the land reform of the early fifties, that tried to even out land ownership. Every thing went great for the first few years, production increased, life got better for everyone. The people became believers, then in 1958 Mao led them down the path of the insanity called the great leap forward with the establishment of the People's Communes. There was supposed to be rural industrial development by building backyard furnaces to make steel.They backed away from the farming and wasted time on the furnace. As this happened everywhere in China it led to starvation. It was made worse by local officials trying to meet assigned targets lying to higher officials about what was really happened. This led to their continuing down the wrong path. Not everything that happened in the village was such a disaster. Finally the village worked things out and started to build a better life for everyone. I found especially interesting the discussion of the way they handled birth control. Having male heirs to continue the family is of extreme importance to the Chinese. But also the curtailing of population increase means only one child per family. How all that is handled is extremely interesting. Really a fascinating story of how a well run village works.

This book is the most detailed and thorough terrorism intelligence dossier I have ever read. The chronolgy of terrorism is an interesting read and provides nearly boundless potential for school projects. The sections on the weapons of terrorism and the list of terrorist organizations are excellent reference material, and something to relieve your mind from the chapter on how terrorists aquire their funds. This should be required reading for any recruits of the CIA, FBI, M16, and any other intelligence or international law-enforcement agency.

This book proved to be a very good book about the world of terrorism. You get a roll call of the terrorist leaders who operate on a global basis.You are also able to find out where their centers of operation are at. Even more interesting is the types of weapons that are listed by the author.You are able to find out the weapon of choice for the most dangerous terror groups in the world.This is a very good book that you should take time to read.You will find that this book is very informative and good to read.Buy it.

Just briefly, I am an historian so perhaps I am not the general reader. But I found Rebecca Kugel's account of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) struggle to adapt to the rush of Euro-American settlement utterly absorbing. It makes the choices faced by Native Americans, and the factional divisions among themselves, clearer than anything else I've read.

I am impressed enough with the book that I intend to use it as a textbook in my college class next semester. We'll see if my Minnesota students are equally impressed.

This is one of the most compelling stories that I have read on the Indians experience with the Europeans. My son brought this home, it was one of his college books, and I could not put it down after I picked it up.

Like other works by Yerger, "Waffen SS Commanders" is primarily a picture history. It also has nice 2+ page biographies of the military careers of senior Waffen SS officers. There are occasional passing references to their lives after the war, but nothing beyond 1-liners. Some of the biographies are of well known figures such as Dietrich and Hausser whom you can read of elsewhere, but this is probably the only place you will find biographies of minor figures such as Jungkuntz and Hampel. This is the first volume of what is intended to become a 4-volume series, and alphabetically only goes up to Kreutz. Guess who wrote the preface to this book!

Waffen-SS Commanders is a two-part series on the major commanders of the Waffen-SS, perhaps the most controversial fighting formation in history. Yerger's sympathies with his subjects shows, but he is willing to distinguish between SS officers who conducted themselves in a professional manner and proved themselves in combat and the political favorites of Himmler who rose from the ranks of the German Polizei and whose units were particularly brutal in anti-partisan operations but were no match against professional soldiers. Examples of the former include Otto Baum, Heinz Harmel (whose treatment of prisoners and civilians at Arnhem earned praise from the Allies-General Harmel is still alive and at nearly 100 years of age still conducts his daily life in the same way as he did as a soldier), Paul Hausser and others. The lesser lights among the commanders of the Waffen SS include Friderich Jeckeln, Curt von Gottberg, and Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who testified for the prosecution at Nuremberg out of survival and not remorse for any actions-his brutality during the 1944 Warsaw uprising and his granting of POW status to Polish insurgents to insure that he would not be branded a war criminal in the eventuality of a German defear are documented by Yerger. To his credit, von den Bach did not renege on his promise to the Poles, although had Germany somehow won the war or negotiated a separate peace with the West, the Poles probably would have suffered a different fate.

As controversial a subject as the Waffen-SS was, not all of the commanders could be considered brutal criminals or incompetent as portrayed by revisionist history. To be sure, they served an ideology which was evil and most of the commanders were members of the NSDAP, but the majority of SS commanders were in fact professional soldiers equivalent to their army counterparts in the Wehrmacht. Most of these commanders did conduct themselves in a correct manner and fought with honor for their country, even if the regime they served had few redeeming qualities. It is a tribute to these commanders that the Waffen-SS still arouses much passion, even today, and most modern armies today use tactics and innovations which originated with the Waffen-SS over 50 years ago.

John Kotter is Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Harvard Business School and a leading authority on leadership. He is author of several books on leadership. This Harvard Business Review-article was published in 1990.

The main difference between leadership and management is that "management is about coping with complexity ... leadership, in contrast, is about coping with change." Kotter explains the differences between leadership and management by making three comparisons: setting a direction vs. planning and budgeting, aligning people vs. organizing and staffing, and motivating people vs. controlling and problem solving. While discussing the differences, the author also discusses the relationships between leadership and management. He also touches slightly on the character requirements of leaders and managers. The author uses Lou Gerstner at American Express, Chuck Trowbridge and Bob Crandall at Eastman Kodak, and Richard Nicolosi at Procter & Gamble respectively as examples for these comparisons. "The real challenge is to combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance the other." In the final paragraphs, Kotter provides some insights in how leadership and leaders are developed. He also explains how organizations can "do a better-than-average job of developing leaders", such as pushing responsibility lower in an organization, create more challenging jobs, stress growth through new products and services, support and attention from senior executives, etc.

This article provides a very clear introduction between the two distinctive and complementary systems of action for leadership and management. Weakness is that it does not provide new insights into leadership and does not provide a detailed framework on how to create leadership within organizations. I would recommend this article to people who are moving into management and first-year MBAs. The article is written in simple US-English. Please note that this article runs on Acrobat eBook Reader software and is not a .pdf-file.

John P. Kotter is Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Harvard Business School. This Harvard Business Review article was originally published in 1990, this On-Point version was issued in December 2001.

"Leadership is different from management, but not for the reasons most people think." Kotter believes that leadership and management are complementary systems of action, and that both are essential for business success. Management is about coping with complexity, while leadership is about coping with change. Both system of action involves decision-making, but each in a different way. The author explains the differences by comparing setting direction vs. planning and budgeting, aligning people vs. organizing and staffing, and motivating people vs. controlling and problem solving. He uses Lou Gerstner at American Express, Chuck Trowbridge and Bob Crandall at Eastman Kodak, and Richard Nicolosi at Procter & Gamble as leadership examples. Kotter then continues to discuss the attributes required for leadership. He believes that a significant challenge early in careers (during their twenties and thirties) are most important. Later in their careers they need broadening, which means growing beyond the narrow base that characterizes most managerial careers. Kotter concludes that corporations should put an emphasis on creating challenging opportunities for relatively young employees. This could involve decentralization, since that pushes responsibility to lower areas in the organization. "Institutionalizing a leadership-centered culture is the ultimate act of leadership."

In his 1982-article 'What General Managers Really Do' Kotter researched how general managers spend their time. In this article, Kotter compares leadership with management. He uses the three main activities of leaders and managers for comparisons. Highly recommended to leaders, managers, people moving into management, and MBA-students. The author uses simple US-English.

If you have already read books by or about Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Lou Gerstner, Andy Grove, Herb Kelleher, Jack Welch and Sam Walton, you will probably think this is a two star book. If you are unfamiliar with any of these gentleman and their companies, you will find this book to be a helpful introduction that can direct you to more detailed reading on subjects that interest you.

What's new about this book is that Mr. Krames positions thought experiments in the sections about each CEO so you can address a business problem . . . and compare your answers to those the CEOs might have supplied. These are a cinch if you have read about the people involved, and are otherwise quite challenging. There are also helpful questions to test your organization's current applications of the concept at the end of each CEO's chapter.

What's not new about the book is any information that hasn't been written before about what the CEOs did in their own companies. I cannot remember seeing anything that I hadn't seen already. As a result, the book serves as a condensation of past learning. That's helpful for those who read little and have limited time. I didn't detect too many problems with the material. The consistent pattern of misfocus was concentrated in not in explaining enough about the context for the ideas. All of Jack Welch's big theme ideas were borrowed (as Mr. Krames points out for Sam Walton), and Mr. Welch was often quite late in picking up on and applying those ideas. Many of the initiatives in expanding service at IBM were well underway before Lou Gerstner arrived. I graded the book down one star for these slight misfocuses.

If you have the time, there's a better book either by or about each person than this one. Feel free to go to the better source!

As I finished the book, I began to realize that much study of great leaders is influenced by the size of their success . . . rather than the size of their accomplishment. If we were looking at leaders who had made great transformations, we would also be reading about Millard Fuller at Habitat for Humanity International, Jack Bogle at Vanguard, Mike Ruettgers at EMC, Richard Reese at Iron Mountain, Rob McEwen at Goldcorp, and Bernard Liautaud at Business Objects. I wonder what it will take before studies of best practices turn to those who are best at those practices.

Krames has an excellent concept for this book: select several exceptional corporate leaders, examine each in terms of a specific objective to which both he and his organization are fully committed, and then explain what can be learned from HOW that objective is conceived. Of course, he could have selected a different seven...or perhaps add several others to those he did. Few can question the inclusion of Dell, Welch, Gerstner, Grove, Gates, Kelleher, and Walton. After explaining "What Made Them Great" in Part 1, Krames devotes a chapter to each in Part 2 as he explains those defining strategies which have made each exceptional. I commend Krames for including exercises which actively engage the reader's mind. For example, a brief scenario "that puts the reader in the seat of the [given] CEO." Krames offers a series of business situations which enable his readers "to test their business acumen against that of each of the seven subject CEOs." Each chapter is filled with various lessons as well as "Assess Your CEO Quotient" questions which can be asked both of the individual and of her or his own organization. Throughout his narrative, Krames also inserts brief comments from the works of business thinkers such as Peter Drucker and Philip Kotler so as to provide different perspectives on the given business issue.

Here are the seven CEOs and their respective defining strategies:

Michael Dell: Place the customer at the epicenter of the business model

Jack Welch: Create an authentic learning organization

Lou Gerstner: Focus on solutions

Andy Grove: Prepare the organization for [in italics] drastic change

Bill Gates: Harness the intellect of [in italics] every employee

Herb Kelleher: Create a performance-driven culture

Sam Walton: Learn from competitors, but remain faithful to the vision

Listing the CEOs and their respective defining strategies is easy to do. The great value of this book is derived from Krames's rigorous analysis of each CEO and defining strategy within the context of their respective organizations. The reader learns not only the WHAT but also the HOW and WHY. I agree with Krames that these seven as well as other exceptional leaders have much in common: an "outside-in" perspective; an evangelical leadership gene; an understanding of the critical role of culture; a passion to create next-generation products, processes, or solutions; a determination to implement the best ideas, regardless of their origin; and, meanwhile, a commitment to increase and thereby advance the leadership body of knowledge. This is an exceptional book about exceptional leadership, one which I highly recommend to business students and recent graduates as well as to those well along in their business careers. I also presume to insist that maximum value will be derived only if the various "Assess Your CEO Quotient" questions are answered with appropriate care and then rigorously evaluated. Stated another way, there is much to learn from the CEOs but perhaps even more can be learned from these self-audits.