economics-schools

This book is a disappointment, but it was very close to good. The articles are mostly anecdotes and project descriptions by Wirth's students. I, too, was expecting more direct descriptions of Wirth's teachings. The glimpses shown here were almost enough, but in the end, unsatisfying.

I'm giving it three stars. If you will do anything to learn more about Wirth, you should certainly read this. For general programming insights of similar ilk other books, such as The Practice of Programming or Meyer's Object-oriented Software Construction, are better places to look.

Echoing the previous reviewer's sentiments, I expected to learn more about the person. Instead, you get some short articles (of uneven quality) by his students. Remarkably, the one most aligned with my current job--the Clint network--was the one I found most tedious.

As a minor plus, the book has a really *nice* cover.

I donated my copy to the local library.

This is the first nerd-book that I've read in a _long_ time that I could call inspiring. It got me back to my roots of computer science and applying Occam's razor to everything I see, think, or do. I only gave this a 4 star because one of the chapters is not congruent with the goals of the book. Chalk that up to the ego of that author and ignore it. The rest is great.

If you are an older generation software engineer and feel like you are drowning in the needless complexity of modern day languages like C++, perl, or java, then I think you owe it to yourself to give this book a try.

If you are a newer generation software engineer and haven't seen what some of your predecessors were doing before and around the time of your birth, then you REALLY owe it to yourself to give this book a try.

I was born the same month as Smalltalk. It's one of my favorite languages. When were YOU born?

This book fails to offer one single argument against vouchers and charter schools. The so called 'teachers' like Breidner, which are mostly active union members and are against teacher accountability, are the same people that always ask for more money for public schools but less responsibility on the part of the schools. The likes of Breidner are the ones that teach our children garbage and except fat pay raises. I say, to hell with this book. It was a major waste of time.

"To Hell With School Vouchers, Charter Schools, and Merit Pay," by Samuel Breidner is a short book that's well worth reading and probably won't reach much of the audience it should. To begin with, it's mistitled. The book is a proposal for Theme-Based Academies in public schools, in which teams of teachers design curricula around themes that keep the students interested in learning. Vouchers and the rest are used as a threat to justify the need for this change if we are to save the "marketability" of our public schools. Otherwise, the concepts in the book's title aren't addressed at much length, and the description of the book on its back cover is absurdly misleading.

The book starts out with a couple of other strikes against it. It promotes patriotism on the front cover and religion on the back (neither of which I care for, though I'm aware many others do). The book is full of bad grammar, typos, and arrogant grand pronouncements, and it starts out in a rambling stream-of-consciousness manner that barely managed to hold my interest.

Getting through it was worth the effort, because the book's proposal makes a lot of sense. Thirty percent of American kids drop out of high school, and it's hard to blame them. The education provided is often lousy and does not even seem well-intentioned. It bears little relationship either to what students expect to be doing after graduation or what they would prefer to be doing right now.

Breidner makes some proposals that would probably help, and are already helping in some places:

Theme-based education (themes include: "liberal arts, small business, financial/banking, law, aviation, bio-medical, advertising, television, woodworking, art/design, maritime, wildlife/ecology, and the like."); Teacher teams with a Lead Teacher for each academy, and team control over what other teachers joins the team; Teacher control over lesson plans; Apprenticeship programs; Higher teacher pay; Higher teacher qualifications; Renaming principals "administrators," separating their duties from those of teachers, and paying them less than teachers; School choice for parents; Requiring student attendance and parent participation; Requiring that parents be financially responsible for students' behavior; Reviewing students' progress on the basis of a portfolio of work.

These excellent proposals are explained in a disorganized but persuasive manner, and at only 89 pages the book's drawbacks don't amount to much trouble. I think it should be read by anyone thinking about the problems with our schools.

Sam Breidner comes across as a dedicated educator looking for a progressive way to improve our public schools. He gives concrete arguments against school vouchers, charter schools & merit pay. His constructive suggestions for improving our schools with theme based instruction is clear and of proven value. Hooray, for a champion of public school education, the American way.

I was interested in the whole take on Chile. It seemed to be the perfect model of American foreign policy. It seemed hard to argue against Chile. It seemed that dictatorships and extreme poverty were necessary evils in building industrialized democracies.

Then I read Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. He brings to light something that economists cannot ignore. Even though most industries were privatized, one industry was regulated stricter than democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende ever meant to. The copper industry, Chile's leading industry was that industry. Those other industries that were privatized that are noted even by pro-Pinochet economists for causing poverty and social decadence all round.

If you care to look into the Chicago boys, just take a look at Milton Friedman's work with a critical eye. Rather than seeing to promote libertarian thought, he seemingly hurts it more. The Chicago boys built the same economy paradigm that was followed by the Russian Communist Party (yes, the Communists; 60% of the population opposed free market economics) that led to further economic chaos and social decay in post-communist Russia.

I've met many libertarians that have nothing nice to say about the Chicago boys and the Friedman line of thought. Nice way of defending Pinochet's rule. Too bad it's far from the truth.

This book focus on a fascinating subject: the story of how a bunch of Chilean free market economists transformed a dictatorship into a model democracy and a prosperous economy. Valdes describes the team and its origin with skill and knowledge. But then his partisan socialist background betrays him and he begins to see conspiracies and imperialist designs. A wasted opportunity.

A fascinating, but ambiguous book: Its central characters are the so-called "Chicago Boys", economists who served under the Pinochet regime. The author explores the roots of their ideas and their sense of mission, following their training at the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. These planners took advantage of the opportunity afforded them by the 1973 military coup to launch the first radical free market strategy implemented in a developing country.

Let us be clear here: Pinochet was, undoubtedly, the worst kind of tyrant. Even U.S. officers accused of conspiring with el jefe (Henry Kissinger, for example) do not dispute that his reign was horrible by U.S. and European standards. Thousands of opponents to the regime were tortured, jailed, and "lost".

The author does not deny this, nor does he make any attempt to candy-coat Pinochet or his regime. Quite the opposite.

Gabriel Valdes was, after all, a liberal who escaped Chile during the regime and joined the government that replaced Pinochet's. Yet he refuses to deny (as many have) the ambivalence of the Pinochet legacy. For even as the General practiced the worst kind of political oppression of dissent, he encouraged free-market economics... and Chile prospered as a result. Other states (Nicaragua, for example) which started out as darlings of the Left fell in to the worst kinds of economic decay, as Chile moved forward. (Skeptics may credit this precipitous collapse to the Contras, if they like, but the record is otherwise.)

According to this author, the ideological strength of the Chicago Boys' mission and the military authoritarianism of General Pinochet combined to transform an economy that is now seen as a model for Latin America. Gabriel Valdes makes the case that it was this economic growth itself which laid the groundwork for democracy. Ultimately, it was Pinochet's own economic platform that led to his ousting. Just as South Korea finally reached a critical mass of prosperity its government could not contain, so too did Chile's economic turn-around finally propel the collapse of the authoritarian state that had made this growth possible.

Human rights advocates too frequently overlook the vital importance of property rights. In pursuit of economic "justice," they frequently redistribute the economy to death. This author makes the case, in considerable detail, that the right to trade freely and prosper lays the groundwork for other freedoms (to be free of torture, to speak freely, to associate freely, etc.) And, because it creates jobs, free trade groweth can actually eases and obscure class tensions in the long run.

This book offers remarkable evidence for a model of nation building that too few Third World leaders endorse- one founded on the premise that economic growth precedes and permits political democracy.

P.S. I know this review is likely to get a slew of unhelpful votes. So be it. This is a great book that people should read carefully before criticizing. Leaders who refuse to consider these arguments will wind up with a less honest appraisal of history.

Robert Eisner used to contribute to the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, where he was the lone Keynesian voice calling out in a Supply Side wilderness. Because of his unique fiscal policy point of view, though, he tended to talk down the budget hawks. It would be interesting to see what Eisner's take on the Republican Congress and Bush II spending policies appear to be. In fact, despite the declaration of the death of Keynesianism (we all thought we were looking forward to that, in the long run, weren't we?), the last three presidents have all pursued Keynesian policies despite themselves. Both Bushes ran up enormous deficits during recessions, and the Republican Congress/Clinton budgets achieved a "surplus" in a boom era (surplus if you don't count borrowing from Social Security).

This book explains why Eisner thought we shouldn't fear the debt run up by the Democrat Congresses and Reagan/Bush I presidencies. Though it was clear enough to me, and Eisner's practice at writing for intelligent lay readers of various non-academic publications helped, I agree with the other reviewer that it shoots between audiences and so misses both. Still, I plan to re-read it soon in order to determine if his conclusions then are valid today.

Unfortunately, Dr. Eisner's book suffers from the same problems that affected Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time: although both books attempt to give the layman an understanding of the field, and dispel a number of common myths, they are both trapped between intellectual levels. They are too difficult to read through for the average person outside of the field, as they move too quickly and introduce too many concepts for the average reader to keep track. However, were they to be read by somebody within their field, that person would find that there is nothing to be gained by reading it -- they already understand everything that the book has to say. Not a bad book, but it will have an exceedingly difficult time finding its target audience.

The Oxford Classic's edition of th Principles of J.S.Mill is an awful one. It not only omits complete sections of the work and doesn't mention it in the cover but lacks notes and even an index.

Don't buy it!

I must be a complete idiot. I finally decided to open this abridged edition of Mill's Political Economy & Chaps on Socialism, just to see what's going on in there. Lo & behold, as anybody with eyes can see, there ARE extensive notes on the text, including an index of names referred to by Mill! However, I wish to reiterate my claim that it is an "awful edition" for idiots who don't open the book or are unable to read the table of contents. Why doesn't Oxford provide user guides to explain these complex matters?

Rankings in this book are based on the opinions of ONLY those recruiters that the SCHOOL ITSELF directs the WSJ to. It's very, very likely that the schools did not refer the WSJ to recruiters with whom they've had less-than-enthusiastic relationships. Therefore, throw out these rankings.

Read the BusinessWeek guide (most recent - I think 2002?). It's as up-to-date as it needs to be for current applicants, it incorporates a wider variety of information into its rankings (though - like all rankings - the basis is subjective data) and it provides lenghty narratives on the top schools (including international schools). Much more helpful.

First of all, the school rankings in this book are much different from those found in the other, better-known book from the BusinessWeek. It's so radically different that it places Stanford behind Brigham Young and Wake Forrest. The rationale, according to the book, is that the WSJ is using the recruiters' opinions as the major measurestick, instead of the schools' reputation or average GMAT scores. In a way, it makes sense because what ultimately matters for business schools would be the quality of end-products, namely the quality of graduates after 2 years of study, which would be judged the best by the recruiters.

But this book does not have much detailed information about each school. For a given school, the BusinessWeek guide contains description that's approximately three times longer than what's in this book (I own both). However, this book is much more up-to-date. The BW guide was published in sometime around 2000 and it's pathetically behind the times (it's talking about dot.com things). So, I recommend buying the BW guide first, and then using this book as a complementary material, which would be essential at least until BW comes up with a new, up-to-date version.

Frankly, I am quite disappointed with the changes to an otherwise superior product. I noticed that the chapters dealing with women and minorities were omitted since the last edition. Given that corporate america has not yet realised its goal of diversity in its executive ranks, we should be mindful of the special considerations confronting such groups. Moreover, business education benefits when diversity goals are given thoughtful consideration.

I thought the Vault Reports Guide to Management Consulting provided a better inside view to consulting firms, and also had actual consulting case interview questions and answers. In contrast, the Harvard guide was primarily a compilation of information from firms' recruiting brochures.

This book gives us a good idea from the advanced industries nowadays. How they could have a competitive advantage? It can help you to look the world outside. Of course that if you want to apply this concept you'll need something deeper. However, if you are a beginner, you can have good moments from recent news and concepts of the companies.

Although the structure is very similar to THE REVOLUTION IN CORPORATE FINANCE, Rutterford's book includes only articles on adding shareholder value. Among the contributers are well known academics like F. Black, R.M. Stulz, or R.S. Kaplan. All in all, a good supplementary book to other corporate finance sources.