Leader

This book is about Mamphelafs political life. Personal aspects of her life are rarely told unless they pertain to her activism or illustrate inequality. Individuals are rarely mentioned; those that are, are rarely mentioned more than once.

Donft read this book if you want an old-fashioned story with interesting characters who interact to create entertaining plots.

Read this book to learn about the battle of a black woman against patriarchal apartheid. Read about her gsuperwomanh strengths and the sacrifices she made for the movement.

Across Boundaries is an excellent book focussing on a mother's struggle to want a job and to be a mother at the same time. Even thogh this book was written by a woman from Africa it still pertains to many American mothers who struggle over the same problem. This book did not only focus on the mother aspect, but also on the fact that a woman wanted to help the condition of other woman also.

I found Mamphela Ramphele's autobiography very interesting and amazing. The struggles she went through during her life absolutely amazed me! She is one of the strongest women I have ever heard of. I enjoyed reading about her fight for rights, her relationship with Steve Biko, and how she balanced all of her activities. I found it very interesting that she did not put motherhood as a priority in her life as many other women do. I enjoyed reading "Across Boundaries" and I thought Mamphela did a good job of telling the true story of her life.

Aburish's biography of Saddam Hussein is a refreshing retelling of a story that's been muddled by a decade or more of half-truths and lies. The strengths are that he himself took part to a large extent in dealings with the Iraqi regime during the decade of the Iraq/Iran war. Aburish's insights and commentary are invaluable. The weaknesses in the book become readily apparent. Said has some duplicity in the regimes attempted acquisition of a nuclear [device] and other weapons of mass destruction. Said is also anti American and anti British. When he addresses US involvement in the Gulf War his arguments become tirades against Saddam , the US and Britain. It's his very ant-US and British attitude that make Aburish's recommendation for dealing with the Iraqi regime nothing but a mechanism for the continuation of oppression by Saddam and the so called Ba'athists.

Aburish's own involvement in the regime and view of the US aside, I highly recommend this biography of Saddam Hussein. He sets right many misconceptions about the Iraqi dictator. His mother was not a prostitute and Saddam didn't commit [destruction] at the age of 15. These myths and other myths are dispelled. What Aburish does is to emphasize the tribalness of Saddam by setting it in the context of Arab culture. Saddam becomes less a madman than a ruthless tribal leader for whom you are either with the tribe or against it. Opposition to the regime is treated like a blood feud. Even Saddam's affinity for Stalin makes sense. Both were the sons of poor peasants widowers in semi-tribal societies (Stalin was ethnically Georgian not Russian) and both used control of the bureaucracy to help in gaining control of power.

In spite of its weaknesses The Politics of Revenge is a highly readable and informative.

Breezy but informative bio that attempts to explain Hussein's stature as the most popular dictator in recent memory. Nice photos, too!

Aburish has written a good book on Saddam Hussein. One has to remember that it is part of the writing process to understand your readers' perspective. So, in this case it means that Saddam has to be judged by western standards. I have lived ten years in Iraq and liked especially Aburish Said's critical thinking towards horror stories that come from Iraq. I noticed while living in Saddam's Iraq (1980-1990) that iraqis tell all kinds of stories that are not to be taken literally. For example iraqis said that one European ambassador had slapped on the face of his European subordinate. The ambassador in question became very angry at such story. Of course it was true that this ambassador was angry, but to resort to physical violence is very serious matter in Europe. Iraqis just added this minor thing about hitting to illustrate how angry he was. I feel that in many cases stories that are coming out of Iraq are not exactly true in western sense. Aburish analyses well for example the case when Saddam killed his health minister. Iraqis hoped for peace, so they mixed their hope of peace with Iran to the fact that Saddam killed a minister. So story changed in the minds of iraqis, who thought that this minister had told something bad to Saddam in order to make peace with Iran. Aburish corrects many similar stories with his rational thinking. Of course it is true that Aburish has written his book mostly from his memory. So there are few mistakes. For example Saleh Ammash didn't die in 1975 (perhaps 1985 is correct). But these are minor things, because Aburish is so well informed about the Middle Eastern politics. It is always pleasure to read Aburishes books. His book about House of Saud is written with great wit.

Being a disciple of W. Edwards Demming, Peter Scholtes has a quality department's process bias; emphasizing systems, processes and statistics. Was I reading another new age quality assurance textbook? Because of this, I felt he overemphasized the present moment. True leaders are going places and have many loyal followers. The book rarely talks about this visionary thinking or how effective organizations are moving into new areas. This is a good book for beginners as long as you're aware he presents a different viewpoint, and because of this, he did bring some useful ideas that other books didn't have. Ironically, he openly admits that you may not agree with some of his viewpoints.

Scholtes expects to shock people right from the first page of his Preface. Let me quote extensively:
"More than 95 percent of your organization's problems derive from your systems, processes, and methods, not from your individual workers....

We look to the heroic efforts of outstanding individuals for our successful work. Instead we must create systems that routinely allow excellent work to result from the ordinary efforts of ordinary people.

Changing the system will change what people do. Changing what people do will not change the system.

Certain common management approaches--management by objectives, performance appraisal, merit pay, pay for performance, and ISO 9000--represent not leadership but the abdication of leadership.

Current buzzwords like empowerment, accountability, and high performance are meaningless, empty babble..." (ix-x)

The old organizations's leaders need: forcefulness, ability to motivate and inspire, decisiveness, willfulness, assertiveness, result- and bottom-line orientation, being task-oriented and having integrity and diplomacy.

Scholtes' new leadership competencies (much influenced by Edward Deming's ideas...) are based on a new mentality and understanding of: systems thinking, variability of work, how we learn, psychology and human behavior, interactions of these components, and vision, meaning, direction and focus.

The bulk of the book gives clear elaborations of these new competencies, with charts, illustrations, pertinent questions and many tools. Ch. 4 on "Getting the Daily Work Done" is a tough one, partly because it takes much effort to grasp the author's use of a Japanese term, "Gemba" (even when I can read the original Chinese characters). Issues of waste, standardization, change versus improvement, performance without appraisal, use of measurement data... are all seen in the new light of systems thinking.

Carefully study the differences between "Crazymakers" and "Healing and Learning" in the workplace (pp378-387). There is a summary of the book under "The 47 Habits of Pretty Good Leaders" (pp391-6). Peter Senge's books give excellent background material. This one is a real handbook that should be methodically studied, discussed, adapted and applied to one's own institutions. One must not forget the advice given in Chapter 1: "leaders must be patient with themselves and others, persistent, and humble, and allow themselves and others to be inelegant." (p12,p391)

Having attended one of his talks, I gathered this book to be condensed from Scholtes' personal experience and practical knowledge which can also be seen in his "Teams" predecessor. A functional manual covering leadership in all aspects, with its depths and substance manifested in simple and easy to follow guidelines.

An ideal recommendation for any modern manager.

These folks are out on the edge, and I am glad for it. We do have to begin speaking the language of our church members who are in the post-literate generation. It has confirmed to me that our church needs to begin (slowly) the integration of multi-media and team based leadership.

Out on the edge of the traditional congregation a media reformation is occurring. One place where this reformation can be seen is at Ginghamsburg Church in Tipp City, Ohio. Another place is in this book by its lead pastor.

Michael Slaughter has been the lead pastor of this congregation since 1979. Upon his arrival at Ginghamsburg he found 90 persons who existed as a dying United Methodist congregation. At the time of this writing, a core membership group of more than 1000 persons provide five weekend worship experiences for more than 3000 persons.

The congregation has a contemporary style that attracts preChristians, seekers, and others on the edge of Christianity. Simultaneously, for those who understand the subtle presentation of theology and Christian symbolism, there are more than enough places to connect with spiritual trandition and culture.

Through the medium of this book Michael Slaughter shares his convictions concerning the life and death nature of the media reformation, a postmodern approach to congregation, and methodologies for building effective multi-sensory worship leadership teams.

A bonus is a CD-ROM included with the book. It contains materials that talks about the process of designing worship, six sample worship scenarios, a media portfolio of selected worship elements, and a searchable text of this book.

In addition to buying and reading this book, take advantage of visiting the congregation when you are in the Cincinnati area, or attend one of their annual teaching church events.

I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Slaughter's book! He gives a great,concise overview of how times have changed in the way of communication. It helped me realize that many churches have remained content to use methodologies that may have worked 20 or more years ago while neglecting technology that has created a new paradigm for effective, relevant communication. Mr. Slaughter includes actual job descriptions and schedules of key people needed to produce, what he calls, a multi-sensory worship experience. A very helpful cd-rom is included with several examples of what he describes in the book. If you are involved in planning worship services, you need this book!

Johnson is too dry in his writing style. The result is that you couldn't care lessa bout his exploits or the exploits of the men under his command. No doubt this book is a classic and Johnsonw as the supreme British RAF man. But the book is badly written.

Johnnie Johnson's autobiography is a superb document. Few "war stories" can rival its simple, straightfoward presentation and honesty. I take strong issue with other reviewers who view the book's writing style as lackluster--i believe that this is a ridiculous criticism given the fact that Mr. Johnson never claims to be a Tolstoy of literature, only a pilot who did his job and wrote about it afterwards. Where Mr. Johnson's words were sparse, my imagination had no trouble completing the pictures being sketched by his concise words. I would much prefer this kind of honest account of war to the false drama created by authors who are more interested in demonstrating their craft than relating a story. Thank you Mr. Johnson for your beautiful book and for the significant role you played in history during the 1940's.

Johnnie Johnson flew fighters and fought throughout WWII, taking part in the Battle of Britain, the invasion of Normandy and the campaign in Europe.

This is an easy-to-read book, written shortly after the war and the writing is fresh, undiluted by time.

One of the classic books of WWII, it should be required-reading for anyone wishing to understand what it was like for a young pilot to fly, fight and survive for five long years.

This book is really not as good as the 4 or 5 positive reviews would have you believe. It is overly simplistic and provides no information that any MBA couldn't have thought up in 5 minutes.

There are two major sections to Beatty's book. 1: How businesses think "today" (really, 1996) and 2: Basics (and I mean basic) on the executive job search. The first part is pretty useless because as an MBA, you should have your own thoughts and opinions on today's businesses. This book provides nothing worth spending money for. The second part is okay if you know nothing about executive job searching but is much better served by John Lucht's "Rites of Passage".

For real insights on Executive career movement, John Lucht's "Rites of Passage" is a must read. In the last week, I have read both books (I'm currently leaving a Big 3 consultancy) and Lucht's book was infinitely more valuable.

Good luck.

In the first chapter or it may even be in the Preface, it says all the books available, if they are more than 5 years old, they are outdated. Its copywright is 1996, since then we have seen the New Economy Boom and now we are in the midst of a New Economy Crash(maybe). Right now, jobs are not as easy to come by, anyway.

I would have to say that so far its content is readily applicable, still. Although, we are not quite halfway through it.

Really impressed by research but most importantly it was right. Fundamentally changed how I approach my career and work - and it has benefited me greatly.

A must have. How great it is to have the facts from the people in the know.

I'd have to agree with the above review from jg109@hotmail.com that this book doesn't show too much of the preliminary EARLY artwork. Unfortunately, that's because what you see in the book IS the Early artwork. And the lack of exploration shows on screen in a bland presentation of a great idea. I prefer the book to the cartoon, because I can take it in short doses.

Disappointing movie, disappointing book. The Dreamworks animation team shouldn't quit their day jobs.

The Prince of Egypt is the first animated film in history to SUCCESSFULLY integrate both traditional cell animation and computer generated images. A breathtaking film, with a scope rarely seen in films today, much less ANIMATED films. The Dreamworks team is a formidible new force in animation - they treat animation as an art form and as a storytelling medium. Not as a summer PRODUCT, like the Disney team. Disney could only hope to produce something this good.

Angela Elwell Hunt is one of my favorite authors. I received this book for Christmas, and eagerly started reading it. However, I was somewhat disappointed.

Hunt is brilliant with character development, and she develops Merytamon, Miriam, and Zipporah with her usual vigor. The obvious and expected spiritual themes in this book are outstanding, inspirational, and Hunt delivers to her readers on these two qualities she always brings out in her stories.

My problem is with the pace of the book- very, very slow. We all know this Biblical story so well that, in reading a book about the women in Moses' life, I expected to hear a twist on the tale, new angles, new stories.

Well, I got some new angles for certain, but new stories? Hunt retells the entire life of Moses as we know it using the women in his life as narrators. Though I learned several new facts about life in Egyptian palaces and a possible, very different alternate history to the love story of Moses & Zipporah (let's just say the Ten Commandments is its polar opposite), I was expecting more twist and insight into the lives of the "shadow women".

I know that Hunt can in essence completely retell a biblical story through her series about Joseph, vizier of Egypt. But she didn't deliver here. Merytamon, Moses' mother, dies halfway through the book, leaving her perspective in the cold. Miriam is made out to be a cold-hearted, self centered, conniving old woman up until the last few chapters. The only parts I truly enjoyed reading were Zipporah's, and even hers were far too biblically repetitive.

In short, these are not the women of Moses as we know them. In fact, this book is more about the life of Moses and his human interactions with women who were around them then about the lives and stories of his mother, sister, and wife and their consequent interactions with HIM.

For all its spiritual insights, the book followed Moses too closely and left his women in the dust.

JK

When the name Moses is said, the image most likely that comes to mind is Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea or thundering down Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments in hand. Yet, there is much more to the character, and Ms. Hunt uses the women of his life to show modern readers that.

His sister Miryam sees Moses' (Moshe) life begin. Though under orders from their Egyptian overlords to kill all newborn males, her mother tries to hide her child, until it is absalutely neccessary to place him an in ark like Noah's, and put him in the Nile. There he is found by Pharoh's daughter - wife, Merytam, the child of Ramses most loved wife, Neferrtitti, and Pharoh's most recent wife. She is barren, and seeks an answer from her gods to hide the condition that would exile her to the harems for the rest of her life. Finding the baby solves her problem, though keeping him alive in the face of coniving, jealous court advisors will not be easy. Perhaps it is only her desperate prayer to the unknown God of the Hebrews that saves her "son's" life.

Moses grows to adulthood, never dreaming that he is one of the "mud people" that his people have enslaved. Learning the truth triggers an incident that sets off his rage and reveals his secret. Exiled and outcast, Moses flees to the lands far from Egypt, and makes a new life as a shepherd, until he is sent back to Egypt by God, with the mission of freeing his people.

Moses is a man without a people, though. He is rejected by Egyptian and Hebrew alike, but he is determined in his quest, and through God's power, he is able to bring his people into the wilderness. As they travel towards the Promised Land, the way is hard, and the people rebellious. On the way, he suffers great loss and many trials. Through them all, his wife and sister watch and support him, despite their resentments and misgivings.

**** If you have ever thought a historical novel would be boring, then read this one and change your mind. It is fascinating and true to the Biblical account, though more detailed and sheds light on things that may mystify readers of the Bible. Like the MISTS OF AVALON, the story is told by varied perspectives, but in this case, it is a true story, and one that will increase your faith.

Forget about Moses. His story has been told and retold. But the story of the enslavement and salvation of the Israelites from Egypt has never been told like this.

"Mists of Avalon" is brought to mind by this book. We see the familiar tale told this time through the eyes of the women who lived this story. The story is told by the Princess of Egypt whose barrenness terrified her until she found salvation in a Hebrew child, by Miriam whose enforced role as the protector of her family leads her to bitter self revelation and by Zipphorah whose love of a strange refugee from Egypt place this desert girl center stage in a drama written by a God she does not understand.

Marion Zimmer Bradley couldn't have done this saga better. Each woman's voice is distinctive and each character fully fleshed and developed. If you miss this book, you will miss a real gem.

The author is a professor of management at USC, so his perspectives on leadership are limited to those qualities found in executives and in very large businesses that support the training of executives. The most helpful aspect of his book is that McCall urges large companies to develop systematic training for executive leaders, rather than leaving younger executives in a sink-or-swim situation. He also has a bias against ruthless, cut-throat competition and male testosterone-driven demonstrations of power and wealth that executives can get drawn into or promote.
Nevertheless, the book is limited: it says very little about leadership as a quality found in other people, other settings; implies that leadership is a unique quality of exceptional people that can be taught to those up-and-coming risers primarily; and supporting data is quite limited. He stumbles when he talks about leadership per se by using an example of a child violin prodigy, as if this child-becoming-virtuoso should be our model of leadership development.
It also is overwritten, the way stuff from Harvard Business School Press is overwritten: breathless, breathtaking, fawning over winners, etc.

This is a pretty good book for those new to the leadership literature. Its main point is that leaders are made, not born. I found it a little long for the point it was making, but thats probably because I've read other books in the area.

You will find a thoughtful, thorough process here for using a company's strategy to delineate what kind of leaders you will need, identify the leadership experiences that can create that type of leader, then to locate those who have the highest potential to develop those capabilities (those who learn rapidly and well), and to monitor progress. This is a very humane book that will help many avoid the painful career derailments that we read about all too often when a top performer suddenly crashes and burns in public.

By comparison, most companies are looking for executives with the right stuff for today, not the future. Then in a Darwinian process of survival of the fittest, those with the best track records win the leadership roles. Professor McCall points out a very serious flaw in this model, in that many people progress without developing any better leadership skills. With more and more success, leadership skill may actually drop as strengths and competencies are more and more likely to turn into weaknesses as they become exaggerated and weaknesses stay weak. He uses a detailed case history of Horst Schroeder, who was fired as president of Kellogg's after only 9 months, to make these points.

On the usually-correct assumption that your company has not yet brought this new model to bear, the author presents an excellent appendix for helping an individual executive to plan and implement one's own development.

"The message of High Flyers is that leadership ability can be learned, that creating a context that supports the development of talent can become a source of competitive advantage, and that the development of leaders is itself a leadership responsibility." I suggest that you consider Jack Welch at General Electric as the embodiment of the truth of this statement.

Now let me share my concerns about this book. Most companies change strategies at least as often as they change CEOs. Many do it even more often. The average life of a strategy has to be about 3-5 years. That's too short a time to be the context for a leadership development program, unless the new strategy requires exactly the same kind of leaders -- which is unlikely to be the case. In such environments, leadership recruiting probably deserves more attention than leadership development. On the other hand, strategy should not change so often. As my co-author and I point out in The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, it is possible to have a constant mission, vision, and strategy in the midst of a rapidly changing business environment if you think through the issues of potential volatility in advance. In that sort of company, this book's approach will prosper, as will the company and its stakeholders. I urge you to combine these perspectives and approaches in that way.

My other concern is that mission, vision, and emotional context are more important than strategy to success. Professor McCall unaccountably ignored those other important "fit" and "development" issues. They should certainly be added back into this general model by anyone who is interested in systematically developing and providing more and better leadership.

After you have finished reading this excellent book, consider the next governmental election you are asked to vote in. How could government leadership be improved by using a similar process to develop the next generation of elected candidates? Certainly, the task of governing is becoming ever greater yet the current process has all of the flaws of "survival of the fittest" that Professor McCall describes here. We can do better. How should we?

How can this process be used in a nonprofit organization that you do volunteer work for?

This is a good book on leadership -- another Bennis classic. A good airplane book, it is a quick read and worth the time.

However, if you have to read ONE Bennis book, I suggest reading "Organizing Genius".

I like the authors emphasis on the learnability of leadership. Though a little dry in sections, it's rewarding for those that see it through to the finish.

This book is great for anyone who wants to find a compelling vision for their company. Rich with anecdotes and better organized than "On Becoming A Leader," this book provides the essential ingredients on what it takes to be a courageous, innovative leader, not just a manager. I also recommend John Gardner's On Leadership