Leading

The day this book arrived I read 6 chapters in 3 hours! This is a very inspirational book about leadership and success and is not just about your children. It would apply to anyone, any age, stay-at-home mom to CEO. I especially liked her personal stories, I felt like she was writing about me. I am living my dream and have never lost sight of my goals. After reading her book I feel like I have been more of a success than I had thought previously. This is a must read book for anyone. M. Craig - Successfull Internet Entrepreneur

I am a Preschool Director and I wish all of our parents would read Susan Collins' book. It's in sync with what we are trying to do in the classroom, letting children be creative thinkers and explorers.

Susan Collins has become a bedtime friend. This doesn't just feel like I'm reading a book, it feels like I know her. I look forward to spending time with her each night. She makes me feel her successes can also be mine.

Dr. Moore's Careerpreneurs...is an outstanding, clearly written treasury of information. The author interviewed over 100 women entrepreneurs--most of whom have been recognized for their achievements by organizations such as Working Women, the National Association of Women Business Owners, Al Gore's Hammer Award, Crain's Award, and as Entrepreneur of the Year in their city and state--to provide a realistic picture of how transitions can lead to a challenging and rewarding career. Using the women's voices and documented research studies, Dr. Moore provides a roadmap for successfully navigating one's career and thus offers a valuable resource for all professional women.

Each chapter is designed to provide personal insight on successful careerbuilding strategies including transitions, leadership and management style, and negotitating techniques. Many of the chapters include self-assessment exercises (e.g., entrepreneurial style, strategies for coping with conflict), and guidelines for handling specific situations (e.g., designing a transition strategy, a four-step plan to analyze the financial feasibility of starting a business).

This is a book that will be useful to organizational women, to those considering entrepreneurship, just starting out or for those without a mentor. The book serves as a valuable reference guide and you will find yourself returning to it time and again as you meet new challenges in growing and developing your career. For more established entrepreneurs, it will spark ideas on new ways to do business and cause you to re-examine and re-think current strategies that may be holding you back from further expansion. You'll finding the chapter on "Growth, Transition and Success" to be especially helpful.

Moreover, the book is inspirational as it contains honest accounts of how these women struggled and overcame barriers to achieve success. The scenarios in the book provide snapshots of the vaired roads to success. Among the role models you will meet are Suzy Spafford, CEO of Suzy's Zoo greeting cards and stationery, and Deborah Szekely, founder of Rancho La Puerta, the Golden Door, and Eureka Communities. If you want to break the glass ceiling and follow your passion, this book will provide the guidance, information, and inspiration you need.

I read Dr. Moore's book a year ago as I started my business as a female entrepreneur, and now a year later I re-read it- and find all the lessons even more relevant and helpful. Any woman considering starting her own business should read this book several times. I have learned quite a bit over the last year, and Dr. Moore's book tremendously helped reduce my learning curve (not that it's been easy).

As a self- employed consultant focusing on women's leadership, I have found especially useful the author's pointers on negotiation, how to invest my time, and how to make the most of my networking resources. Her real-life examples and advice from successful female entrepreneurs and their stories is most inspiring and a continuing source of strength for me. My business has continued to grow, and I truly appreciate the opportunity to have learned from the other entrepreneurial women in this book.

Finding a method of being a mother first and working to provide income rather than slaving to provide a meager income and also having children would be useful to most women (and probably favored by men). As yet, the priority problem between children and working has been solved by so few except those who can afford child care and cleaning help, that most of women's entrepreneurship - including professional employment - is lost in translation! Hopefully this book can help. For men to conclude that women are more than women-children would also help despite the fact that most don't want to be men, contrary to Freud, and those that fantasize over him and his views.

The Art of Leading Yourself offers readers insight into the role that our emotions play in and out of corporate life. Randi Noyes is an astute writer who combines autobiographical vignettes with theories of organizational development to explore the ways on which difficult emotions-the emotions that we would rather dismiss-have the capacity, when worked through, to strengthen our relationship with ourselves and with one another. We learn from Noyes that emotions are not just a matter of genes and spleens, rather they hold policial important and they shape the way we know the world. Her writing is moving,intelligent and relevant for audiences across the diciplines.

I also recommend:
Emotional Intelligence: A Scientific Inquiry
by Joseph Ciarrochi, Joseph Forgas and Dr.John D.Mayer

Finally - an author has created a new paradigm of success and has produced a book that gets right to the heart of modern pursuits. One of the world's leading experts on emotional intelligence, Randi B. Noyes, argues that in today's world, emotions matter. In fact, they can matter twice as much as conventional intelligence and expertise put together in terms of accounting for business success.

"The Art of Leading Yourself" provides a balanced and practical approach to emotional intelligence. It indicates that proper understanding and use of emotions can be critical to helping us be more effective workers and better communicators. Comprehensive, convincing, and invaluable this engaging book is a 'must read' for anyone desiring to make a difference.

Randi B. Noyes has written a beautiful book that will be your loving guide and companion if you are serious about leading yourself from the inside out. For those who are yet to define themselves as the "uncontested boss off their own life", the book will encourage a bigger and brighter dream of what their life can be.

This book is a practical and down to earth approach to navigating in your own life. Its focus on emotional intelligence teaches that if you want to live a whole life, you will have to use your whole self in your day to day living. Filled with living examples, the book is easy to read and enjoyable. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know themselves better.

In the fast paced world of today a great number of us forget about the values we learn that provide a lot of meaning to our life and the balance that we seek in life to be happy. This book reminds of the things that my father and grandfather taught me that I sometimes forget in today's world. This book will help you bring back your focus to the things that are of real value to you in your life. It accomplishes this with a tremendous amount of humor which you also realize is in your life everyday. Thanks Phil for stirring my memories and focusing me on finding better balance/humor in my life.

Phil's mother stopped by the bank and I purchased the book. I come home that evening and could not put it down until I had read the entire book. I would cry at one moment and laugh the other. Joe VanHooser and my Dad had simliar ideas and as I read this book I reflected back to my own childhood. Thank you Phil for reminding me how fortunate I was to grow up in a rural community. Perhaps if more Dad's read this book and provided the type of influence Joe had on his family, our country would experience less violence etc as we do today.

This book is a Trojan Horse -- it looks like a warm, homespun book full of humorous down-home anaecdotes. But in reality it is a book of wisdom gleaned from rural roots and applied to the corporate boardroom. Phil Van Hooser has done a marvelous job of telling stories that have point.

Quite simply, Autocourse is the best Formula 1 review there is. I own a complete set of CART Autocourse annuals as well as a nearly complete set of the F1 annuals from 1961 forward. During the race-less down time of the winter, I always look forward to receiving my new copy of Autocourse to review the previous season. These annuals are great for deciding bets among fellow enthusiasts and for filling in gaps in memory from seasons past. No motorsport library is complete without a complete set of these annuals. Period.

My only complaint with recent annuals is that there seems to be somewhat less information than in the past-- but, by no means, is the information lacking or incomplete. The pictures, which have taken some of the space of the writing, are as usual fantastic and worth the price of the book by themselves. Note well that this complaint does not have any effect on my rating of a full five stars. If you have any enthusiasm for the sport, you must get a copy of this book!

Autocourse is the ultimate annual of the just completed Formula One season. My first volume covered the 1976 season and I own all but two since then. The only reason I missed those two was because they sold out before I could place my order. Each edition continually improves on the previous years with outstanding statistics for each race including lap charts, the absolute best photographs from the world's best photographers and an always intriguing editor's top ten drivers list. The race reports don't miss a beat from first to last place. The technical breakdown gives every detail of each car down to what brake pads and spark plugs they use. You are not a Formula One fan if you do not own Autocourse.

I have a number of autocourses and I still feel that they are getting better with every passing year. If you have an interest in Formula 1 then you should have this book. It gives an overview of each team in the championship and really gets a great insight as to how their performances stacked up and what their expectations really were or should have been. The race guides are an indespensible piece of information for the serious fan, although they do occasionally miss outstanding performances from the middle or rear of the field, due to the majority of the focus being on the battle at the front, however most details are covered and in very good detail. The summary of the other racing series (F3000, F3, CART, NASCAR, etc) is a very worthwhile addition as it gives a good reference point without having to purchase other literature. Then there is the top 10 driver lists, they may not always be the rankings you expect, or agree with!, but they certainly are a good talking point, and quite well justified in most cases.
Overall the most complete annual book about Formula 1 and a complete necessity to any real fan.

When British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton was busy saving his crew after a shipwreck in the Antarctic in 1914, you would guess that he wasn't thinking much about teaching leadership lessons. But author Dennis N.T. Perkins uses Shackleton's expedition to show how the leadership principles the explorer exercised can be applied to your work. He even adds modern case studies as illustration. This excellent book is at its best when it describes Shackleton's courageous rescue. He led his men to safety through a frozen wilderness by focusing on the ultimate goal of survival, setting a personal example, overcoming conflict, minimizing status differences, stressing teamwork and applying other essential leadership qualities. Though the principles may sound familiar, the book provides a dramatic new view of them, and it is written in a clear, crisp style. We at getAbstract.com recommend it to all corporate explorers.

This is simply one of the finest, most fascinating, and most instructive leadership books I have ever read. Dr. Perkins and his co-authors have succeeded in clarifying the universal leadership principles and practices as they exist in the real world. Using the incredible true story of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition as backdrop, and interweaving modern business examples to further illustrate the critical leadership lessons, Dr. Perkins has captured the heart, soul, and guts of leadership for the modern leader. Rather than stopping there, he also gives us the benefit of leadership lessons learned through his own intense experiences "leading at the edge" as a Marine Corps Infantry Officer in Vietnam, and as an organizational leadership consultant. It doesn't get any better than this extremely well-written work. If you, like me, are tired of the "leadership cookbooks" which crowd the bookstore shelves, search this one out. Read it. Discuss it with your family and your colleagues, and truly grow from the experience. The lessons are powerful, the stories are inspiring and instructive, and they work at the level of both metaphor and real-world example of what is possible in any organization when authentic leadership is present. Sean M. Georges, JD, LLM, is a former Marine Corps Officer and now serves as Vice President, Human Resources for a publicly-traded corporation.

The author, Dennis N. T. Perkins, shows extraordinary insight in leadership with 10 clearly stated principles. Based in strong part on Shackelton's expedition, these 10 principles are not only clearly stated, but truly make a difference. It is obvious that Perkins understands leadership. The book is easy to read, but takes plenty of mental energy. This book should be read by any manager, and should be considered a classic.

And Now A Few Words From Me'Bob Garfield

I would rate this as a truly terrific book with one major caveat: Skip the Introduction. Seriously. The author takes a little while to warm to his subject, as they say, and is, in the process, so annoying you might be tempted to put the book down (with a resounding thud) forever.
Don't. Because from Chapter one on it just gets better and better. While he primarily focuses on television commercials, most of his trenchant observations apply to all forms of advertising: that rules aren't always 'meant to be broken'; that it's okay to 'borrow' ideas, but never to borrow attention; that having a modicum of good taste is always advisable, especially when it comes to the use of sex in advertising and so forth.
He also has a great chapter that every client should read carefully wherein he spells out the perils that go along with cooking up claims and promises that are only quasi-true (as in legal let them get by) at best.
And his last two chapters are worth the price of admission all by themselves. In the first he succeeds in getting three titans of the advertising universe'Dan Wieden, Jeff Goodby and Phil Dusenberry'to describe in painful detail the worst mistakes in creative judgment they've made over the course of their otherwise brilliant careers. And in the second, he succeeds in doing something many might consider utterly impossible: he actually makes a very well reasoned (and almost moving) case for why advertising isn't the horrible endeavor many of its creators secretly fear.
A jaunty and informative read for anyone in the business. (Except for that 'too clever by half' introduction.)

...i'm not often a blesfemous man but this book IS Advertising Bible. you know nothing about advertising till you read THIS. it's a humane but yet frenzy and straight-talking study on how you SHOULDN'T make advertising; what often made mistakes to avoid. once you read it you go, "...so that's what advertising is all about. can't wait to get started..." now i often measure advertising(mine, others') by what would Bob say about it. hey, if you won't read this book you ain't never gonna know what advertising really is.

I've long enjoyed Bob's reviews. He's not afraid to call a dog a dog and a peacock a peacock. This book is great even for those just starting out. I've used it extensively in an effort to educate others in the fine art of branding and advertising.

If you're afraid to laugh out loud at other's mistakes, don't read this book.

What enables a company to soar in the midst of mergers, reorganisations and technology change? In their book, Learning to Fly, BP Consultants, Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell, share their secret for delivering more with less and positioning the company for future success. What's more important than the company's size, holdings or product lines? It is the use of Knowledge Management (KM) to adapt what others have already learned and dynamically capture and share the explicit and tacit knowledge of your work force as it evolves.

Learning to Fly is both a reference book and a blueprint. Part One: Overview sets the context for and defines knowledge management.

Part Two: Tools and Techniques describes six very useful tools for managing knowledge. I found their inclusion of real-life examples like BP's "Connect" project tremendously helpful in understanding what is involved in building buy-in for a searchable intranet knowledge directory through which all staff can search for people with relevant knowledge and experience.

In Part Three: Today and Tomorrow, the authors share practical advice about embedding knowledge management in the organisation. Appendices guide the reader to resources for inspiration, people and technology. Internet style pages enable easy navigation through and between chapters.

The book has received critical acclaim from a number of industry leaders. It will undoubtedly be received by those of us in the trenches with the same enthusiasm!

A uniquely entertaining book, Learning to Fly is written with the right blend of theory and practice. From the start, Collison & Parcell build an honest and caring relationship with the reader that takes you on a journey of understanding the why and the how of knowledge management (KM).

The Chris & Geoff hit on many key issues imperative to a successful knowledge management implementation -

·KM should be focused on business results for business objectives. Emphasizing the importance that organizations don't loose sight of why they are doing KM.

·The explanation of KM as an unconscious competence is an excellent model for organization to use for a self-assessment and then strive to achieve.

·Applying KM holistically through the model of learning before, during and after. Proving that building a learning organization is at the heart of KM.

Learning to Fly does it right! I particularly enjoyed the book's creative layout and the way the lessons learned and proven ways to institutionalize KM in any organization are related through thought provoking stories and reflective exercises.

Very down-to-earth, applicable guidelines for building a learning environment within an organization. Focuses on tools and techniques and difficult issues of embedding habits of sharing/learning.
I've read a lot of knowledge management books and this is the one our organization is using as a "starting point" for our efforts.

Business coach Terry Pearce teaches you how to put the personal perspective back into your professional communications. With a credible and authoritative voice, he explains how authentic human connection is missing from today's communications, even though people crave it, especially as they evaluate who they trust to lead them through rapid change. He maintains that leaders who communicate authentically and passionately will inspire loyalty and make their mark. While Pearce is clearly convinced about the importance of inspiring your constituents, the pace of his book won't exactly move your spirit. He walks you slowly and carefully through the discipline he uses to help clients rediscover their authentic voices and craft messages that resonate. His corporate and political client list is quite select, but we find his communication strategies relevant for anyone who is leading change - whether you are building a small community or a large company.

As a professional communication consultant, and former White House speechwriter, I've read perhaps a baker's dozen books on executive communication. It's a faceted field, and some aspects are well-represented in the selection of books available.

But to my mind none has addressed the central need for (and subtle complexities of accessing) truth and heart in business rhetoric with simple clarity -- until this little volume appeared. It's been around awhile and is still a gem.

Terry Pearce teaches communication at UC Berkeley's business school (with side trips to the London School of Business and various corporate gigs), and he's spent time in the trenches at IBM. Perhaps he's best known for his work with Schwab CEO and co-chairman Dave Pottruck (see "Clicks & Mortar," a book they co-wrote). His graceful braiding of theory and practice, and clean style brimming with examples, make this a fluid read that sticks in the mind.

Pearce digs beyond style into substance, and even deeper, into conviction. As a writer who routinely interviews CEOs in hopes of helping them frame their thoughts, I daily encounter this core question: How do you coax and excavate substance from your client, and frame it with authenticity? Pearce spills the tools and techniques of how he does it. If you fret about making your speaker believable -- if you want to craft language that does more than disappear in the pool of rhetoric with scarce a ripple to show for it -- in other words, if you want to help folks communicate in a believable, sustainable way that makes a difference -- that's 'leadership communication.' And this book can help set you on the right road.

Sadly, most corporate speeches are forgettable. Maybe because most speakers are afraid to speak from the gut? If you intend to help raise the level of your own message, or your clients, this one's worth your time.

Thank you Terry Pearce for your wonderful book of wisdom. For me, Leading Out Loud is a framework for meaningful and authentic living. It is that simple and that profound.

Terry shares his wisdom, drawn from his own experience with executives and students, and his keen observations of the world in which we live to give us a framework for addressing the important and age-old questions: "Who am I?" "What do I fundamentally care about?" "How can I express what I profoundly care about to inspire and move other people to action?"

Terry shows us that Leading Out Loud is at the very least a two step process. The first step focuses on the Leader. Me. I need to have the courage to engage in the reflection and the introspection to come from a place of authenticity and conviction before I can ever hope or aspire to lead anyone else. I need to be solidly grounded in who I am, what I believe, what I care about and why I care. This is perhaps the most difficult part, but it is also the foundation for any and all future speak and action.

Terry then shapes a very practical and useable communications framework to help me understand how I can connect with others (this is the Out Loud piece) by speaking to both their minds and their hearts - to engage the whole person, not just a part of them - to seek to inspire the whole human being. I use Terry's communications framework in my everyday conversations, especially the tough conversations - both personal and professional. It helps me to reach a much more profound level of clarity and depth in the quality of my conversations. I use the framework in my work as a coach and consultant to senior managers and executive to help them build their skills to lead and engage the people whose efforts they rely on for success. It is the most effective material and set of tools I work with. I trust it will be for you as well.

Borjesson's "Buzzsaw" is a collection of well-researched insider stories from journalists who sometimes had to fight insurmountable odds to tell the truth. Because these are heroic tales from survivors, the book is a real page-turner from beginning to end.

These heroes fought (and most are still fighting) deep behind the newspaper banner pages and out of sight of the cameras - fought to give you the facts on various stories. Most of these people have paid a very high price for their dedication to the truth. These are the stories about the stories - and information that powerful vested interests preferred that we not hear about. Reason enough to read this book.

If you are at all interested in how the news gets "processed" on its way to your eyes and ears you have to read these stories. That process is currently impaired. In the land of the free press our media got sold to commercial interests and that is the story that we now urgently need to understand. Like the air we breathe, the media is somewhat tranparent. But even if it gets polluted slowly and imperceptibly we will still suffocate.

Borjesson brings tales of the possibility of fresh air.

A democracy depends on a well-informed citizenry and therefore an unbiased watchdog in the media. Universally, survival depends on clear minimally distorted perceptions of the world.

As a design engineer myself, I can assure you that no system is perfect. But after you better understand the news process problems scrupulously detailed in this collection, you may realize like I did that you must do something about it yourself. Thankfully we still live in a nation where we can effect improvements.

Continued ignorance may be bliss, but it is not safety.

This an extremely frightening book.

What's so frightening in it? Not the fact that it claims to reveal some disturbing truths.

Actually, many books are claiming to do just that.

No, what scared me most is the fact that not only most of the contributors are respected journalists, but all the contributions are extremely well documented and precisely, seriously presented to the reader.

It has nothing to do with any "conspiracy theory" book. All the information inside is very valuable in itself, but it also serves as a clinical description of the sorry state of the american media. Since all the accounts are written in the first person, you share all the difficulties of these reporters who commited that completely unusual sin: they actually did their job properly.

As a swiss citizen who fancy the american culture and media a lot, I wonder how the citizen of that beautiful democracy can stand such scandalous behaviour from the mass media.

The story of the involvement of the CIA in the emergence of the crack epidemy in L.A. was particularly shocking. But most of the stories are equally amazing. DO read this book. And trust me: I don't like reading the work of lunatics either, but this is serious journalism.

In various ways, all the submissions in this book prove how the "Free Press" in America is not always so free. With a few exceptions, most of the essays here are by ace investigative journalists who have had their stories crushed by economic or political pressure from the power elite. This has more to do with the elite holding onto power, rather than inaccuracies in the always professional reporting. In recent times, this pressure increasingly comes from corporate media owners. As a bonus, this book also offers several actual investigative stories, including two with hard-to-dismiss conclusions about friendly fire and TWA flight 800.

The high points in this book are the powerful submissions by Monika Jensen Stevenson, covering the preposterous injustices heaped by the US government onto Vietnam POW Bobby Garwood; Michael Levine, covering the mainstream media's complicity in the drug war's ethical and practical failures; and Gary Webb, concerning his travails after exposing CIA drug trafficking operations (the "Dark Alliance" story). All of these stories, and others in the book, were crushed by government pressure in order to protect the power elite. Theory and media watchdog pieces by Carl Jensen and Robert McChesney are also very enlightening.

However, this is an uneven collection with some dismal low points that come close to sinking the overall effectiveness of the book. Kristina Borjesson (the editor) and Jane Akre are unprofessionally bitter in their essays, concerning TWA 800 and Monsanto abuses, respectively - their travails with wimpy editors and official harassment notwithstanding. Severe low points of the book include directionless and self-aggrandizing biographies from Maurice Murad and April Oliver, while Karl Idsvoog's piece is little more than a windy sales pitch for his media consulting firm. But overall, if you can stomach some bitterness and inconsistency, this revealing book will both damage your respect for the modern journalism business, but give you faith that there are still courageous journalists out there who are striving for the truth. [~doomsdayer520~]