Open

This book helped me train for my first marathon in 1997... and several after. It provides three suggested-training schedules, depending on goals and training level, for 10K & marathons. Easy to follow, easy to read. Excellent starting point for new runners. Have read other books by "more famous" authors, but none of their suggested training schedules gave me the confidence I obtained by using this book. (Qualified for Boston every time!!) Future editions could be improved by adding a chapter on recovery following the marathon.

I've been running for a few years to keep the fat off my hips and was pleased to stumble across this great running guide. I must say that i had been doing quite a bit wrong. Now that i've read this book, I've lost even more weight and am just lucky that the writer didn't charge by the pound.

I've been running for only a year, but have really improved since adopting the advice contained in this book. It is also reasonably priced. I recommend it to anyone who wants to improve their running experience.

When I started reading this book, I wasn't sure what to expect. What I found was a wonderful story that I feel all middle age people can identify with. We all seem to have questions as to why we are who we are. This books showed me how to find the answers, by identifying my own inner characters. By identifying each inner character, I was able to see things in myself that I had never seen before. I will now take better care of all parts of my being. This is definetly a must read for all of the baby boomers out there.

I recommend "Open Your Heart" as a fun and simple read allowing for a range of self-reflection. You can take Ruth Cherry's fable and relate each chapter to yourself in any degree you see, sort of like a daily horoscope reading. Or you can simply just be entertained. It is enjoyable and witty, and with it's slim form, a great book to take on the plane in your carry-on.

When a friend sent me Open Your Heart: A Mid-Life Fable, it was a real gift! This is an extremely insightful, inspirational book about self discovery and acceptance of our true personality, with all its positive and negative angles. It helped me understand some of my reactions, quaint characteristics and antics. It also encouraged me to start my own spiritual journey. Many thanks to Ruth for writing this wonderful book! Gracias!

In his first book on Open-Book Management (OBM), the author builds the case for why a change in management practice is necessary, and why OBM in particular uniquely best addresses the issues needed for successful management today. Once one has read that book and is either interested enough to want to learn more or sold to the point he or she wants to implement it, then this book is the perfect follow-up.

This book focuses on the details, and they say the devil is always in the details. You could say the authors first book dealt more with the "WHY" and this deals more with the "HOW", though there is some crossover. By drawing experiences (both good and bad) from 100 companies, the reader can benefit enormously by not having to deal with as much trial-and-error personally. I highly recommend this book to those who are likely to implement OBM.

I recently re-read Case's Open-Book Management: The Coming Business Revolution (1996) and then this book (1999). Both are even more important now than when originally published. In this volume, Case develops his key ideas in much greater depth while examining more than 100 companies which -- to varying extent -- have implemented open-book principles. Perhaps without intending to, some reviewers have incorrectly suggested that these principles have relevance only to publicly-traded companies. In fact, I think they can also be of substantial value to non-profits as well as to privately-owned companies. Consider the over-used phrase "taking ownership" in the context of assuming responsibility for helping to reduce costs by completing more and better work in less time or in the context of assuming responsibility for making certain that a customer's problem has been solved. Heaven knows, what Case advocates will increase "business literacy" among everyone involved in a given enterprise but it can and should accomplish more, much more.

For example, effective application of open-book principles will create a "transparent" organization. That is, one in which everyone is kept fully informed of what is most important to the success of that enterprise. Such knowledge includes but is by no means is limited to financial information which explains, for example, how much it costs to open the door each business day or how much money is spent on training, overtime, postage, shipping, etc. According to Case, "Really the only way for a company to boost performance consistently over the long terms is to have employees who work enthusiastically and effectively and who take responsibility for their own work. Good systems -- meaning good procedures and equipment -- are indispensable. But what makes the difference in the end is whether the employees doing the job think about doing it just a little bit better and care whether they do or don't." At a time when competition is more ferocious than ever before, "battles" will be won or lost within what Case characterizes as "the human dimension of business -- the wanting, the caring, the enthusiasm, the problem solving and initiative taking." Open-book principles offer a new approach to management, one which starts from scratch with a new set of assumptions "about how people in an organization work together." In this volume, citing countless real-world applications of those principles, Case explains HOW...and, of equal importance, WHY.

If possible, read Open-Book Management first. You may also wish to check out Kaplan and Norton's The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action and then its sequel, The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment. Perhaps the Lone Ranger could prevail armed only with a silver bullet but the rest of us need a full arsenal of weapons. Many of them are provided by Case, Kaplan, and Norton.

One of the best books yet on Open Book Management. Full of practical advice for anyone trying to use Open Book Management in their business. As anyone involved in implementing OBM will tell you, you need all the help you can get. This book has given us a host of new ideas and lots of hands on stuff to help us to make OBM a reality in our business. We hope the next book isn't far away.

Must reading to learn the ins and outs of the industry .

Ever since I began work in the mutual fund industry six years ago, I've looked for books that would increase my understanding of the industry. Many books tell you how to invest in mutual funds and a couple attempt to describe (but in my view unsuccessfully) how the industry works. This week I found and read Gremillion's book on mutual funds. And I was amazed. It's all there. History of the industry, the laws that affect it, how funds are manufactured and distributed, e-business and a lot more. I really enjoyed reading the author's impartial discussion of industry issues like the debate over fees and expenses, active vs. passive management, and the state of the market.

Gremillion's clear and concise writing makes his book an interesting and easy read. Too bad it wasn't available when I was in college.

This book is written in a clear, non-academic, and easy-to-follow style. And even though he generally speaks well of the industry, the author does not sugar-coat it. A number of illustrative anecdotes (the book is full of these) describe less than exemplary behavior, such as how one Minneapolis money manager ran his funds into the ground speculating on interest rate movements.

The book is full of data as well. For example, the author doesn't just tell about how much a few star portfolio managers get in compensation. When he discusses what investment managers get paid, he includes the results from an industry survey that show averages and ranges for a variety of positions. John Bogle appropriately calls the book "authoritative" in his foreword.

I'm not sure if this book is out of print -save for the hardcover - or just unavailable but it is well worth getting (even supposing you have to go elsewhere).

Why? First off, anyone who's read Karl Popper knows that he was a phenomenal writer who could pack much content into any one sentence. Mark Notturno is not only that good, dare I say it, he may be better at it than Popper?! Whereas Popper's terseness occasionally led him to vagueries, Notturno is always crisp.

Second, books on Popper tend to rehash his views (which the authors either understand or not - 50/50). Notturno extends Popper's thought. Never quite disagreeing with any of it, Notturno does find fault with a few of Poppers vagueries and corrects them. The essay herein - "induction and demarcation" is notable as it focuses on Poppers tendency to mislead on certain views he held. The distinction between falsification and falsifiability, the problem not being of induction altogether but the fact that bad inductive conclusions, unlike deduction, will not point to a false premise, and from it the fact that Popper did not quite believe all induction to be invalid.

Some other good essays to note (in addition to the ones listed two reviews below) are "education and the open society" which is a good essay on why current education methods might fail (his similarity to John Dewey in this, and other, regards always amazes me). Also 'inference and deference' is a great article exposing the failure of logic to justify, contra popular philosophic practice, deference to authority. Not barring it outright, Notturno highlights two errors of thought that lead us to defer abdicatingly to authority: defensive thinking and poitical thinking. If there was an essay focusing solely on these two concepts (this one only devotes a few paragraphs) then I would've had to give the book seven stars. Also worthy of mention is the afterword "what is to be done" about post-communism and how a proper trainsitiion to a truly open-society can take place. In short, very good book. If you are a Popper fan and are tired of reading secondary books that only rehash, never expand, this is the best book I can think of.

Wow! Easily one of the best reads I've had in years. Not only is it an insightful source of understanding for those interested in Karl Popper's philosophy, but Notturno, himself, emerges as a powerful player in the field of critical reasoning and the politics of knowledge. A devastatingly effective thinker and writer in his own right. It will change your view of the world and the role of reasoning and politics in the conduct of human affairs. Awesome!

Karl Popper had one of the broadest ranges of any 20th Century philosopher. He wrote in Epistemology, Philosophy and History of Science, Logic, and Democratic Theory. In each area he wrote trenchantly and with great excellence and imagination. He was the greatest of 20th century philosophers. Why I feel this way can begin to be understood by reading Mark A. Notturno's "Science and the Open Society." Notturno's work is the most valuable gateway to Popper's yet. It is one of those very few books that serve as the core of one's library, that one returns to again and again.

All of the Chapters in "Science and the Open Society" are striking and contain worthwhile insights. As a whole they allow one to think about the corpus of Popper's work and the major themes he developed over the course of 60 years. In fact, Popper himself wrote no single work that would allow us to do that. Notturno, in providing that perspective here, gives us a bird's eye view that we must work much harder to get from Popper's work. If you seek an understanding of Popper, start with Notturno and then read Popper for yourself, with the context you need to actively grasp what Popper presents.

All of the book is valuable, but there are a few Chapters that stand out from my own perspective as a Knowledge Management practitioner. These are Chapter 10 on the choice between Popper and Kuhn, Chapter 7 on the meaning of world 3, Chapter 5, a brilliant account of the breakdown of foundationalism and justificationism and of how Popper's critical rationalism escapes from the problems inherent in these views and provides a basis for solving the problems of induction and demarcation, and Chapter 3 on the significance of critical rationalism for education in open societies. Here is a more detailed review of Chapters 10 and 7.

Chapter 10, "The Choice Between Popper and Kuhn: Truth, Criticism, and the Legacy of Logical Positivism," takes up again the task of proper reconstruction of the nature of science following the breakdown of logical positivism. Notturno shows that Popper and Kuhn took two contrasting roads in journeying from this crossroads of 20th century philosophy. He traces how Kuhn and the many who followed him took the road to relativism, institutionalism, and "political" science, while denying the possibility of external rational critques of governing paradigms. Popper, on the other hand, took the road to thoroughgoing fallibilistic truth-seeking, a path which rejected foundationalism and justificationism, and offered a view of scientific objectivity attained through shared criticism of alternative knowledge claims conjectured as solutions to problems. As Notturno puts it (P. 230): "The issue at base is whether science should be an open or a closed society." Notturno shows that its is Kuhn's choice that leads to the closed society, and Popper's that supports the idea that (P. 248) ". . . our scientific institutions should exist for the sake of the individual - for the sake of our freedom of thought and our right to express it - and not the other way around."

Chapter 7 is a careful account of Popper's controversial notion that there are at least three "worlds" or realms of ontological significance: (1) the material world of tables, atoms, buildings, lamps, etc., (2) the mental world of thoughts, beliefs, emotions, etc. and (3) the "world" of words and language, art, mathematics, music, and other human, non-material, but sharable and autonomous creations. Popper criticized monism, the doctrine that only the physical world exists, and dualism, the idea that there is only mind, matter, and the interaction between them, in favor of a broader interactionism among three realms. This idea has been among the most difficult of notions for people to accept.

To many (including Feyerabend and Lakatos who ridiculed it), it smacks of Platonism, even though Popper clearly distinguished his own world 3 ideas from platonic forms. But Popper's world 3 notions are critical to his ideas about the pursuit of truth, criticism and trial and error as the method of science and problem-solving, the growth of knowledge, and evolutionary epistemology. Popper's world 3 is also critical to knowledge management, because without it we can't sensibly talk about managing the interaction between subjective mental knowledge (world 2) and objective linguistic knowledge (world 3), and, one can argue, it is managing this interaction to enhance the growth of relevant knowledge that is knowledge management's greatest challenge and major preoccupation.

Of all the commentary I have seen on world 3 Chapter 7 is the best at simply stating what Popper meant by it, why the notion is important to critical rationalism and the growth of knowledge, why people have denied its importance, why world 3 is consistent with a thoroughgoing fallibilism, why world 3 is a denial of empiricist epistemology, why the notion of world 3 is not invalidated by the greatly over-rated "Ockham's Razor," why world 3 doesn't violate the principle of causality, and finally why world 3 is important in spite of the view of the Wittgensteinians that solutions to philosophical problems which world 3 is an instance of, are meaningless because such problems are themselves meaningless. And in the process of doing this commentary, Notturno presents and analyzes for us a wonderful story of an encounter between Popper and Wittgenstein (mediated by Bertrand Russell) at Cambridge on October 26, 1946, which in microcosm, illustrates the conflict between reason and authority, and the open society and the closed society. It was an encounter in which the master of the cold stare, the mystique of genius, and the pithy aphorism, found himself so frustrated by the master of critque and dialogue that he left the field of open debate in anger and disgust.

Saussure is important as a linguist (although many of his theories have since been put out to pasture) ... but he is most important for his contributions to the theory of Structuralism (and, later, Poststructuralism). His idea that you could not study language as individual units, but rather had to examine it as a structure and study how the units interacted within the structure, was enormously influential in modern and postmodern philosophy.

This book is not particularly difficult; it's a bit dry, but what can you expect from a linguistics class? If you read it carefully, you'll have no problem grasping what he is saying... and, when you are done, you will be well on your way to understanding what people like Lacan, Derrida and Foucault are trying to say. (You'll also be well along your way to understanding Claude Levi-Strauss, who attempted to do for anthropology what Saussure did for linguistics). If you want to understand modern philosophy, Saussure is as indispensible as Marx or Freud. Combine this with *Saussure for Beginners* and you'll pick up Saussure's train of thought in no time.

This book is the manifesto of structural linguistics. But it has been widely read outside linguistics for it served as corner stone of structuralism. It was not intended to be published. In fact Saussure never wrote any book. It was principally a lecture. So lines of the book are easy to follow and clear-cut. But the power of the statement could be felt even now. It set off the mighty paradigm.
As Foucault said in his work, ¡®The Order of Things¡¯, the history of thoughts is the history of models. For example, the biology, in particular Darwin¡¯s evolutionism, served as model to thoughts of the 19th century: beliefs in progression of Marxism and liberalism drew on the analogy between society and evolution of organism. Functionalism in social sciences also utilized that analogy. The 19th century is the age of biology. The linguistics of that time also took the organic model as the fountain of inspiration: the language is a organic entity which evolves though time. Phoneme and word change, in other word evolve over time. In Saussure¡¯s term, it¡¯s the diachronic aspect of phoneme and word. The linguistics of the 19th century was the history of them. But Saussure contended that phoneme and word have no memory: at any point of ¡®parole (the language in practice)¡¯, each word has only one meaning. In everyday life, etymology doesn¡¯t make sense at all. The reality of language lies not in diachrony but in synchrony. This is the point where Saussure redefined the linguistics: the object of linguistics is not diachronic (or historical) fact but synchronic system (langue, in Saussure¡¯s term).
Phoneme and word make sense not in their own, but against systemic background like grammar. The object of the linguistics is not phoneme or word in practice (parole) but the system that gives meaning them (langue). Phoneme and word have meaning only in the way how they are different from each other. The langue is the system of that difference. Here comes in the very concept of structure that give rise to French structuralism. Structuralism is the thoughts based on the model of language which Saussure redefined, that is the system of difference

Ferdinand de Saussure and his students in Geneva at the turn of the century articulated in notes, critical insight attributed to Saussure in that "The sole object of study in linguistics is the normal, regular existence of a language already established." A tall order no doubt. Taking Saussure's insight as an assumptions, we are compelled to examine the system itself and guess as to its characteristics. In this, Saussure's most influential work is the Course in General Linguistics (1916), a compilation of notes on his lectures. In this book Saussure articulates a simple way to describe language in that it is a system, involving at least two people, who transmit conceptual material from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the listener. Taking it one step further, saying that it is a system which accomplishes this task through the oral articulation of sounds and the auditory interpretation of those sounds. From this point of view, the process is opaque, it is a process by which the mechanisms are obscured from our sight and we are compelled to guess how it all happens.

Here is an attempt to understand the process outlined in the book. There are two spots where a mental process is taking place: "A", which is somewhere between the "mind" and the mouth, and "B", which is somewhere between the ears and the "mind". We can really only speculate as to the process by which this is done. The next best approach is way to take notice of "WHAT" the process "IS". This is where Saussure and his students are are their finest - both the process in A and the process in B is a pairing between a sound and a concept - A is a process changing concepts into sounds and A is a process changing sounds into concepts. "What is the process by which sound signals are transformed into conceptual information?" This question could be said to be at the very core of just about every sub-discipline in present-day linguistics and Saussure's notion of the "linguistic sign" seems to be the foundational assumption.

The key to understanding Saussure is to view the linguistic sign a process rather than a thing. It is a mental relationship between a sound pattern (Signal) and a concept (Signification). Other literature would say Signifier and Significant - but in keeping to this literature we will stick with Signal and Signification. To Saussure, the "linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern. The sound pattern is not actually a sound; for a sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer's psychological impression of a sound." It is the link between the signal and the signification that comprises the sign. It is not just a relation, but a relation from an abstract entity to an abstact entity. It is easier to understand the abstraction if you take into account that the signal and the signification to be processes rather than things.

Language function in the realm of a community. Saussure takes language, "considered in itself and for its own sake", to be the "only true object of study in linguistics." Okay, then the linguistic sign is a helpful device in explaning language, but it does not represent the wholeness of language, which is the object of study. Here is where the community aspect comes in - "individual, acting alone, is incapable of establishing a value", there should be some larger system to which linguistic signs belong - a framework. Saussure posits that to "think of a sign as nothing more would be to isolate it from the system to which it belongs.

Another key area of consideration that I will not endeavor to explain but count as important for future consideration is the relation of synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Saussure distinguished synchronic linguistics (studying language at a given moment) from diachronic linguistics (studying the changing state of a language over time); he further opposed what he named langue (the state of a language at a certain time) to parole (the speech of an individual). Saussure is foundational in understanding the methods of Structuralist and Post-Structuralist like Claude-Levi Strauss and Michel Foucault. To engage in these realm without having the foundation with Saussure is only making things difficult for yourself. I recommend this book highly.

Miguel Llora

There are very few people of any gender that are really able to seperate Martial Arts Fantacy from REAL WORLD Safety. There are even fewer female Martial Artists that can seperate idealistic feminism from pragmatic female survival.

Kristie Kilgore is one of the few who CAN.

In short, if there is a Woman of Girl that you love..... Read this book, then give it to them!...

WOW! What a great book. Extremely informative. I do not have to be a karate expert to save my life. Ms. Kilgore does a great job at providing techniques that anyone can use. I was very impressed with the real life stories that people were willing to share with the readers on things that happen everyday, that I take for granted "this won't happen to me" well,they do. I also was amazed at the things people actually do to your personal identity, on vacation, at home, at school etc...... Thank you for all of the great information that you have provided me!

"Kristie Kilgore has performed a great community service to every woman in America. This should be required reading and I am giving a copy to my teenage daughter as a present. As a former bodyguard, father, manager and soccer coach, I can honestly say that her message is right on the mark! Good job!"

For those of you who may not have known me in my "other life,"
I used to be quite disorganized . . . in fact, I once wanted to enter HOME OFFICE COMPUTING'S "Most Disorganized Office" contest,but couldn't find the application for three years because it was buried on my desk. (True story!)

So when I saw HOW TO GET ORGANIZED WITHOUT RESORTING
TO ARSON by Liz Franklin, a self-described
Cultural Anthropologist, I just had to read it if just for the title . . . and I'm glad that I did . . . the book delivers on its promise.

Franklin uses humor to get her points across, yet she also
provides a lot of very concrete advice . . . in addition, she
doesn't tell you what you have to do, and she recognizes the
fact that everybody is different.

And any author who manages to incorporate one of my
favorite stories into her writing has definitely managed to
catch my attention . . . she writes:

Albert Einstein once went to dinner with a friend and a new
acquaintance. Over dinner, the new acquaintance asked
Einstein for his phone number. "Sure," said Al. He got up,
left the table, and walked back toward the phones.

"Where is he going?" asked the acquaintance.

"I don't know," said the friend, with a puzzled look on his face.

Einstein came back and handed the man a slip of paper with his
phone number on it. "My God, you're Einstein!" said the guy.
"Why do you have to look up your own phone number?"

Einstein said, "Why should I keep in my mind the little things
I can find anywhere?"

There were several other memorable passages; among them:
* Paper flow starts at hand level. It comes into your office via people's
hands. You open the mail with your hands, you take it from the fax,
printer, or copier with your hands, you scribble notes with your hands,
clip interesting things out of the paper with your hands, and input to
your computer with your hands.

Why all the emphasis on hands? So you'll remember this important
secret of organizing: paper always lands on the first available hand-
height surface. And what do we find at hand height? Furniture. Paper
lands, and stops, wherever there is a convenient piece of furniture.
Preferably a flat piece of furniture, but almost any hand-height
furniture will do.

* Sit back in your chair, crumple some scratch paper, and let it drop
from your hand. That's where your trash can belongs. If its new
location interferes with your traffic pattern, of course you can make
adjustments. Just be sure it's easy to toss trash from your chair to
the can without bending, leaning or stretching all day long.

* Put this sign on your Central Headquarters box: "DO NOT DISTURB!
WET PAINT!" I'm not kidding! If you don't protect your stuff now,
you won't find it later. And for some reason, this is a sign that gets
people's attention. Who cares it they laugh-at least you'll have
achieved your objective: to keep them out of your stuff.

This book was useful, witty, relaxing, and simple enough to be applied by just about anyone.

The unusual approach to organizing is refreshing. Everyone is different, and Liz's book gives you clues to your personal style, making it possible for you to do your organizing in a way that will work for you. And it's humorous. I laughed out loud several times while reading it. And these things work!

I have not yet travelled to Kenya, but I have read this book. The aspect of the book that I enjoyed the most was Ms. Vachon's "no big deal" approach to dealing with a very different environment and culture. She really put me at ease, particularly in regard to family travel.

The book was also very well organized into logical sections, making it easy to find needed information.

I had always dreamed of going to Africa, but my husband was terrified at the prospect. We bought this Kenya guide in hopes of getting some accurate information. We found it very organized and pleasant to read. Ms. Vachon's book relieved many of his fears and we used the book intensely in planing our trip. Every tip, review and suggestion she wrote turned out to be true. We really credit this book in helping us experience the trip of a lifetime.

Pretty comprehensive. Covers all the do's and dont's and lets you design the type of experience you want. Helpful that the author actually grew up there....

This book is a compilation of essays on open source from the author. He covers the origins and history, as well as a responsible coverage of the licensing models. While there is an over emphasis of Linux, it does talk about various business models that can be used in the open source context. It also includes the text of some of the major open source licenses.

Sometimes a home run is little more than a hit causing an increment tick to a stat, but once in a while it's a powerful work of art that changes the game--Donald Rosenberg's book is the latter. It is, by far, the best book on Open Source written to date.

As someone involved with open source strategies at a large corporation in the computer industry, I found Donald's book to be objective, insightful, and current which reflects an intimate knowledge of someone on the inside.

The level-headedness of this book makes it an essential read for anyone trying to understand the counter-intuitive nature of open source or protect themselves from the FUD, emotions, and convoluted conversations that plague Open Source.

This was an excellent book; well researched, well written, and well organized. This book provided a remarkable contrast to "The Cathedral and the Baazar", which, while interesting, was generally poor in its organization and far too biased to take seriously. Although the author is obviously biased towards open sourse, this is the most objective book I've read coming from the open source community. Rosenberg often objectively points out the challenges the open source debate will face legally and philisophically in the near future. This is a great reference book for anyone interested in the open source debate.