Mutual-company

and who knew he was just a professional photographer? the level of information is so in detail, i thought he was a biologist! GREAT BOOK!!!

Hawaii isn`t just big waves or sunny beaches.
For a fish enthusiast,it is a heaven of beautifull animals.
And this book is very helpfull when knowing what animals that hides beneath the surface of the ocean.
Practically every habitat is invaded by creatures creeping,floating,crawling or swimming.
Over 500 species are identified here. Scientific & common names,natural history,size,cultural importance,ecology and suitability for aquariums - everything can be found here!
The habitats are also presented,before the ID section begins.
The book begins with a chapter about sponges,which are not as diverse here as in many other areas,but nevertheless,they are very colorfull. Then,we will see some jellyfish in the next chapter. My favourite is the white-spotted one. We also have Hawaii`s corals here. They are not well-known and not so colorfull as their relatives in the Indian Ocean,but it is good to know their names. The anemones are also quite anonymous,but very colorfull. After the huge coral chapter,the worms are presented,both the bristleworms and the nudibranch-like flatworms. The latter are the most beautifull creatures of the reef,with all of their colors,but not the cutest. The worm chapter is rather small,but the next chapter is covering the molluscs. They are very diverse,with more than 110 000 species worldwide. Both clams,shells,nudibranchs (=sea snails)and octopuses are presented here. The cowries are famous here,and I can`t understand why their shells are so famous - it is the living animals that covers the shell that are really amazing!Other shells included here are the venomous cone shells,the huge triton and many more. The nudibranchs should not be forgotten either. Their colors and shapes are endless in variations and beauty. Black,white,green,yellow,purple,pink - every color exists!They are even beating the fishes in beauty. The octopuses,of which only 8 species are presented,are rather similar to each other,so it`s not much to say about them. Then,I jump to the second of the book`s big chapters - about the Crustaceans. The crustaceans are my favourite invertebrates and therefore,this section is very interesting. Many rare species of reef crabs,lobsters,shrimps,mantis shrimps and unusually colorfull hermit crabs are presented here. My favorite is the rock lobster. The last chapter treats the echinoderms,which are highly developed although they lack head!The seastars,sea cucumbers,urchins and featherstars are included here.

After you`ve seen that chapter,the wonderfull book is over!
And it has been really great.
REMEMBER: This is just what I have told you!Now it`s your turn to dive in and get your own invertebrate knowledge!

I just returned from a vacation in Hawaii. I took this book, along with a reef fish book also by Mr. Hoover. While I highly recommend both books, the comprehensiveness and quality of this book make it a real standout. How Mr. Hoover managed to include photos and descriptive text of so many common reef invertebrates is amazing enough, but I was really impressed with how much fun this book was to read. I found myself taking it to dinner and reading (much to my wife's chagrin).

For those of you who like to dink around streams this is the book for you. It is written for the laymen and is very readable. The photography and text are outstanding. I finally know something about all the things I have been catching. Thanks to the two authors for a great job!

I love this book. For years I have been looking for a book on freshwater fish in Hawaii and now I got one. Great pictures and plenty of info on every freshwater animal in Hawaii! I highly recommend it for anyone who likes to fish in Hawaii's creeks or just wants to know what type of fish that was we used to throw rocks at.

This is one of my all-time favorite books! Those who have read and loved RLS' requiem:

"Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."

will love this novelized recreation of Stevenson's last years in Samoa.

Having a few yrs in college but no degree in anything, let alone the stock market. i came to my new job having no idea what i was in for nor had i heard of the series 7. i spent a lot of time alone with the passtrack series, and successfuly passed the 7 the first time. i am still employed by a lg investment firm and use my license everyday. without this book, i doubt i could have done it. if you want to pass the first time. this is the book.

Brilliantly written, "Trusted Partners: How Companies Build Mutual Trust and Win Together" contains all the essential directives for building, sustaining, and harnessing the succulent fruits of a harmonic coalition.
This 319-paged book is an exhaustive compilation of both ideas and pieces of advice. Its logical arrangement ensured that all those crucial information remain dynamic. This is an important text for anyone who is into (or tends to go into) any form of corporate alliance or similar association.
Every important ingredient required for building, improving, and nourishing partnerships is in this book. Most of them were illustrated with examples.
This is a sound Management book. It is all about winning. Almost perfect! But I did wish that it provided clues on how to constructively repair a partnership that has been damaged by egoistic tendencies.

Lewis has ventured into governance territory where few have trod--for example, asking how to structure boards of various types of alliances. To my knowledge, no other book has this type of material, which makes this book an excellent choice for corporate directors. (I am familiar with this audience, because I am the Editor-in-Chief of Director's Monthly, the official newsletter of the National Association of Corporate Directors, Washington, DC).

The basic premise is obvious: There can be no solid"partnerships" without trust. As the subtitle indicates, Lewisexplains "how companies build mutual trust and win together." It is imperative that individuals be worthy of trust. They must earn it and then sustain it with behavior based on core values. We all know that values derive from character (or the lack thereof), that values determine attitudes (both negative and positive), and that such attitudes are revealed by behavior.

My guess is that those in greatest need of this book will encounter the greatest difficulty when attempting to follow Lewis' suggestions. "Trust is at the heart of the knowledge economy....Rather than being a matter of blind faith, trust must be cone step at a time. Further, building trust between organizations is all-encompassing. It involves their people, politics, priorities, cultures, and structures." Organizations become untrustworthy when those within those organizations are untrustworthy. Over the years, all of us have been victimized by fraudulent claims, intentional misrepresentations, corrupt "politics", "a hidden agenda", broken promises, etc. If trust is to be built between organizations, there must be interpersonal as well as intrapersonal relationships based on trustworthiness.

Lewis's book is divided into three parts: Trust Leads to High Performance, Alliances with Key Partner, and Tools for Trust: A Guide for Practitioners. He follows a step-by-step process within each part, providing an abundance of observations, suggestions, and caveats. Who will derive the greatest value from this book? Here are my nominees:

1. Decision-makers who have the authority (not simply the responsibility) for their organization's cultural transformation.

2. Owners/CEOs of start-ups who are committed to building trust as well as sales and profits.

3. Those involved in M&A initiatives whose due diligence includes evaluation of cultural capital as well as material assets.

One of the book's most valuable sections (Chapter VII in the Third Part) summarizes "actions that establish trust-building habits." Note the use of the word "habit." Lewis is quite correct when insisting that time and effort are required to build and then sustain trust. Conversely, trust can be quickly compromised by a single act betrayal.

In this final section, the "trust-building habits" are classified as follows: Trust Conditions; Recruiting, Training, and Rewards; Management Behavior; and Other Activities. Once you have read the book, selected what is most appropriate to your own organization, and then begun the difficult task of implementation, it would be a good idea to re-read Chapter VII in the Third Part. The counsel Lewis provide will help you formulate your own tasks and objectives within the framework of the eight trust conditions and related practices.

If those within your organization are unwilling and/or unable to make a sincere and steadfast commitment to building and then sustaining trust, find another organization. And consider this fact: The companies which dominate their respective industries are the same companies which are rated the best companies to work for. Coincidence? I don't think so...and neither does Lewis.

This is a fantastic book and a great gift for anyone who is interested in starting up the hobby of lei making. I bought it for a friend who has been making flower leis for a couple of years. It identifies all the best seeds in Hawaii to make leis out of and includes a section in the back of the book about dangerous seeds. The pictures of the leis are beautiful too! I could be wrong but I think this is the only seed lei book out there.

I originally purchased this book to study for the Series 6 exam. I found it very helpful since it covered all the topics I wanted to review. Equities, bonds, economic policy, mutual funds, and even retirement planning were all covered in great detail. It's a good study guide too, because it has questions at the end of each section. If your taking the Series 6, I would like to recommend this book, and wish you good luck!

Would recommend anyone intersted in this book to first read "Bogle on Mutual Funds" first as it's an excellent book and covers similar material. If you are still interested in learning more about Vanguard, then this book is an excellent compliment. It's not as critical of it's subject as I would have liked, and really doesn't cover the personal life of the subject so as a biograhy leaves a lot to be desired. It does, however chronicle the amazing story of Vanguard.

Wouldn't it be interesting to know what really goes on inside Fidelity? They own every company in America and their proxies ought to control the outcome of every boardroom battle, what a subject! Plus, this is one man's creation and certainly a discussion of who he is and what he does would be interesting.

But, no. Unfortunately, you can't look here for much of any insight into any of these subjects. Too bad.

This is a book that needed to be written: the explosive growth of the mutual fund industry in the past 20 years is one of the seminal events of our generation, and Fidelity is the most important mutual fund company out there. That having been said, I think that Diana Henriques could have done a much better job. The text is often jumpy and disjointed, and the actual events as Henriques relates them often don't warrant the build-up that she gives them in her introduction to them. More disturbing, I disagree strongly with many of her criticisms of Fidelity. Don't get me wrong: there are many valid criticisms of Fidelity that can be made, from the exorbitant fees it charges for average performance to the many ethical lapses that have plagued Fidelity in the past 10 or 15 years. But Henriques carries it too far. In one breath, she criticizes Fidelity for selling massive amounts of stock early on Black Monday in 1987 to meet the equally massive redemption requests that its funds had received over the previous weekend because most Fidelity funds did not have sufficient cash on hand; in the next, she criticizes the Fidelity Magellan fund for having too much cash on hand in early 1996, thus missing the big market rally that was in progress then. Likewise, she criticizes Fidelity's active role in corporate governance and then later criticizes Fidelity's policy that Fidelity funds in the aggregate cannot own more than 15% of any company. You can't have it both ways -- any organization which controls more than 15% of a publicly-traded company is going to have a big influence on the way that company is run. At its core, I think that Henriques's fundamental problem is that she believes that the Americans are and ought to be complete financial waifs who cannot be expected to make decisions about their finances in a responsible and informed manner. This assumption causes her to take Fidelity to task for things that Fidelity should not be taken to task for, and it undermines her books credibility.

The author tells the very interesting history of Fidelity Investments and FMR, from Ed to Abby Johnson, and through it, a history of the mutual fund industry in America. The author makes a case for Fidelity being an autocracy geared to selling shares in mutual funds at all costs. Certainly, the last few years have shed a lot of light on the seamy side of Fidelity. In Fidelity's defense, little is told of the "good guys" at Fidelity like longtime manager George Vanderheiden, and even the tale of Magellan is told haphazardly (what happened to Morris Smith?). Still, I found that I was pretty much unable to put it down for long, and it was pretty good read.

Having read all of Mr. Bogle's other books, I found this one a total waste of time. Too bad, since his other books are masterpieces!

I am a big Bogle and Vanguard Fan, and I say this as a shareholder. But this is a big waste of time, unless you like reading transposed speeches. Anyone looking for a in depth look into the development and early days of the Vanguard Group as Bogle transitioned from Princeton...to Wellington Renegade will be horribly disappointed. I know I was.

It's ironic that the cover of the book doesn't allude to it's content...copies of speaches. I guess "Character Counts" only when your dealing with other people's money...

Go Vanguard!

Several reviewers say not to buy this book because it repeats itself over & over. That is just the point that these people (who must have low SAT scores) missed; namely that virtue and honor do not change.We all learn by repetition and that is what Mr. Bogle does. Vanguard was and continues to be founded on bedrock solid honest principles that will not change.He is especially cognizant of his "Crew" (they are above employees)and their constant contribution to the success of Vanguard. Mr Bogle had a heart transpant in 1996 and remains in vigorous and good health. My favorite quotation of his is "The past is history. The furure's a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why we call it the present." (Page 272) This book could be sold in Christian Bookstores. I am sure many in the financial world cannot or will not understand it.I bought 5 copies of this book to give to my family & friends. It not only gives a history of the stock market for the last 80 years (and the shenanigans), but a wonderful lesson in CHARACTER COUNTS.