economics-schools

In today's unstable global environment we appreciate more than ever the virtue of resilience in both individuals and organizations. This collection promises to provide you with the ability to solve problems without the usual or obvious tools and prepares them to improvise rapid responses to crisis. You *will* find enough solid contributions here to justify the purchase, unless you already have the original HBR articles. The pieces range from Robert Galford and Anne Siebold Drapeau's February 2003 "The Enemies of Trust" back to William Patagonis's "Leadership in a Combat Zone" from late 1992.

These two pieces also hint at the diversity of the collection hidden under the title. Patagonis writes about how he directed the logistics of the 1991 Gulf War. He explains that leading successfully requires a person to demonstrate expertise and empathy - which can be systematically learned and true leaders create organizations that support the cultivation of leadership. Galford and Drapeau analyze the role of trust, finding a disparity between managers beliefs about their own and their colleague's trustworthiness and their lack of confidence in their ability to build trust within the organization. In explaining the disparity, the authors distinguish three kids of trust: Strategic trust, personal trust, and organizational trust.

Two of the strongest pieces are Diane Coutu's "How Resilience Works" and "A Survival Guide for Leaders" by Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky. Coutu explains resilience at its toughest as consisting of a staunch acceptance of reality, a deep belief, often bolstered by strongly held values, that life is meaningful, and a well-developed ability to improvise. One weakness of this piece is that the reader is left to figure out how to go about the development process if no crisis forces the issue. Heifetz and Linsky draw on their book Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading to explain risk management for leaders in two parts: An externally-focused part offers tactical advice about relating to your organization and the people who comprise it. The internally-focused part focuses on your human needs and vulnerabilities to help you from defeating yourself.

The other pieces included are: "Leading in Times of Trauma" by Jane E. Dutton, Peter J. Frost, Monica C. Worline, Jacoba M. Lilius, and Jason M. Kanov; "Crucibles of Leadership" by Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas; "The Toxic Handler: Organizational Hero - and Casualty" by Peter J. Frost and Sandra Robinson; and "September 11, 2001: A CEO's Story" by Jeffrey W. Greenburg.

If you have a lot of questions about a Career in Marketing this book will answer some of it. From this you will need a lot of experience. Experience is one of the major areas of the resume' which will be able to move you places....

I went to the library and went through pretty much the whole book. There really isn't anything unique this book has to offer, as most of its tips are rather practical and known.

The longest section of the book deals with the LSAT. The advice in this section mirrors what you would read when you register with the Law School Admission Council -- when the LSAT is administered, when you should take it, how to prepare, etc.

The most helpful section in this book discusses the value of volunteering during college, or doing internships with the local attorney's office. However, you can read this section at the library in less than 15 minutes.

I do not recommend buying this book. If you are really curious about its contents, just go to your library and check it out.

There is no doubt that this book will be widely read. The book contains discussions of many Austrian themes and insights, though sometimes mixes these up with non-Austrian elements apparently in an attempt to make them look more acceptable to mainstreamers.
This also leads to less than full consistency on some occasions.
The link between the last chapter (about policy proposals and containing a defense of fractional reserve free banking) and the previous chapters is less tight than the author believes. Apparently the author hasn't fully absorbed the Austrian argument against fractional reserve banking. Paradoxically (for a book purportedly about microfoundations) this flaw can be related to inadequate attention paid to microfoundations. For instance it is utterly irrelevant to argue (or at least suggest) that a system of 100% reserve banking would be unable to handle a problem like the deflation during the Great Contraction: under such a system this problem simply would not occur in the first place...There is no reason to believe that in the unhampered market prices will be sticky downwards etc...

If this book could be updated, with CURRENT industry and student remarks, I would give it a much better review. The MBA 'payback' and education approach is now currently under turmoil with the global downturn and the corporate scandals worldwide - this book of course is now too old to consider these aspects.
Be very careful, particularly if you expect an MBA in the current climate to 'spoonfeed' you a job with Morgan Stanley, to take this book too seriously. I am currently in the final term of a top-flight MBA in the Asia-Pacific region (which included a European exchange to a highly regarded school), and have had the time of my life, so can speak with a fair bit of authority about the book.
It is very well written and honest, so that's a good thing.
Unfortunately it was written right towards the end of the Internet bubble, and way before Sep. 11 and Iraq, so the book's advice in the second part in particular is now almost like reading a quaint history book of a bygone era.
It also at times takes too much credence from some of the studnent's comments, many of whom have a very US-centric/investment banking view of the MBA (ironically the region/sector that has been affected worst by the MBA downturn)
As a book telling you about the CURRENT situation of what you get out of the MBA, it is hopeless. It badly needs to be updated.
The MBA is still the most amazing experience of my life, but my current class have learnt to become 'optimistic realists'. The book needs to reflect this.
Have a look at the latest articles on [website](uk - education section) regarding the tough situation for current MBAs to see what I mean....

Also somewhat one-dimensional in its approach

Next to the Vault.com MBA career website, I found the MBA Planet book to be the most critical resource for MBAs.

This book is designed for: those thinking of going into product management, and MBAs from top 20 schools.

While the interviews were insightful, they were almost all from MBAs in product management positions. Thus, the title is midleading, as it does not cover all the "Careers in Marketing" (hardly). The VGM Series book "Careers in Marketing" by Lila Stair, while it has its limitations too, would be a better resource.

Also, the interviews and company list (which took up most of the book) is most helpful only if you are coming from a top school. There are many potential companies not on the list, and few will happen to be in your geographic area. The people who were interviewed are in postions on high end of the scale in terms of stress and responsibility, which is certainly not going to be the target for everyone just completing their MBA.

I have found most of HBS Career Guides available at the local library. Unless you fit the narrow reader target, I would check this book out at the library rather than purchase it.

This book is embarrassing. In my opinion the Vault Career Guide to Marketing and Brand Management is a superior guide to careers in marketing. Good luck.

As an recent MBA grad, I found this book to be extremely helpful. The company descriptions and Harvard grad profiles are great, but the resource pages alone, make this book worth the price. This career guide is a great first step for those considering a career in marketing!

This book offers no relevant information whatsoever. Peterson's is very confused with the term 'Worldwide' as there are ONLY FOUR schools not in the USA. It also seems that the schools in the book are advertised rather than rated. This book will be going straight into the bin.

There are better choices for learning about MBAs by distance learning than this book. One is Bears' Guide to the Best MBAs by Distance Learning. I bought both books and it's not even close. This is particularly true if cost is important. Bears' book provides many more international MBAs (UK, Australia, Canada) which are far cheaper than almost all of the U.S. programs, but are still academically quite strong (and better than many of the U.S. programs).

It is now well-known that Peterson's sells ad space in their books disguised as research. Shame on them! Obviously these schools are allowed to say whatever they want.

I liked the book when I bought it, but then I read, in mid-2000, that Peterson's had been selling advertising in the book, that looked just like editorial material. In other words, many of those lovely write-ups on schools were written by the schools themselves. Peterson's said they will identified the paid ads in future editions, but their credibility is really shot with this kind of behavior, and I'm really disappointed.

I was disappointed with this book as with most books about J P Getty because it failed to talk about his home life in any detail. In particular, it failed to mention how he treated his wives, children, and grandchildren; how he refused to pay the ransom for one even though he knew about his whereabouts. It basically glossed over everyone he left behind, including his grandson William Paul Getty who celebrated his birthday one day after J P Getty's death.

--Gummi Bear

This book is an outstanding history of J. Paul Getty. It well covers the story of his business career and the building of a sizeable fortune. This book covers his career from the beginning until his death in 1976. The novel also points out the fact that Getty was a millionaire at a young age. This publication also gives good coverage to the establishment of the Getty museum.It is pointed out that Getty,in his older years had actually become a philanthropist. This book is without question a very good coverage of the life of one of the giants in American industry. Read this book. You will be well satisfied.

I looked forward with great anticipation to this book. Koolhaas' "Delirious New York" was a fascinating work, and "S,M,L,XL" was both interesting and a great argument against hard drives. This book was a major disappointment. It doesn't delve very deeply at all into it's subject matter (the Pearl River Delta area of China) and most of it's "important ideas" are sophomoric. I would say the most irritating thing about this book (other than the totally artless and pointless photographs that litter the book) are the code phrases (highlighted in red) that read like a grad student's compendium of inanities. Don't waste your money.

It's great that people are starting to look at this topic, but this book reeks of a quick-hit, let's-publish-a-book-after-a-seminar job. The title itself says it all: the Great Leap Forward was a Maoist economic project in the late 50s that left up to 30 million people dead. How can one use this term, which refers to one of the great human tragedies of the 20th century, as a cute title for a book? The GLF wasn't cute. It has nothing to do with architecture or urban planning. Using it in this cavalier way belies a complete ignorance of the past 50 years of Chinese history. Sorry if this seems like nitpicking, but I can't take a book seriously that doesn't take its topic seriously.

The previous reviewer was disappointed with this volume after reading Koolhaus' books. While the 3 volumes of the Project of the City are under his (loose?) direction, these are actually all anthologies of writings by individuals connected to the Harvard Design School, each book on a separate theme: metropolis (Mutations) shopping (Guide to Shopping) and the Pearl River Valley, this volume. I knew nothing about this region of the world until reading an article in Mutations about it.

Did you know that just one of the cities in this region went from a population of 30,000 to 3.9 million in 15 years? And this growth was accomplished basically without any city planning department? Or that architectural plans for a 40 floor high rise take less than 2 months to complete?

All of the Project on the City books have many similarities, which you can consider a strength (my opinion) or a weakness (previous review). Take a huge subject (PRV, shopping...) provide millions of factoids about it, present those fact in a cacophony of words, graphs, photos (and with Mutations, there is even a CD of avant electronic music). I liked that about S,M.L.XL and I like it in this series. A treatise on architecture and urban planning in the PRV I never would have read. Just too obscure and potentially boring a subject. But after reading and carefully studying all the photos in this book, I'm left with a large, jumbled set of distinct impressions about the PRV, which raise all sorts of questions about the role of architects and planners in developing countries (or in the US, for that matter).

To me the revolutionary things about S.M.L,XL was its insistence that architecture is not best discussed in articles. Even articles with accompanying photos. That is way too static, too two-dimensional a method of transmitting information, and not well suited to how we absorb information in the 21st century. Rem's recent books gives us a cacophony on information simply jumping off the page. The Project on the City books continue those ideas, and I think do a good job of it.

I subtracted a star because of Rem's highly annoying joke of "copyrighting" words that contain key concepts in his writings. This is particularly annoying since some of the writers in this anthology are clearly puzzled by this requirement and lack even the minimal style and humor with which Rem unfurls this trick in his own writing.

I found the discussions of complexity and risk as applied to financial crisis to be superficial and somewhat platitudinous. There are no in depth discussions of the factors involved in any recent financial crisis. There are various discussions of risk, complexity, evolution and Keynesian vs. Austrian schools of economics but no real depth or new perspectives on any of these issues are presented. The discussion of the pros and cons of socialism(collectivism) vs. capitalism(free market) societies was not much more substantive than an article you might see in the Business Section of USA Today. A graph showing(arguing) that the US is higher in on the scale of economic "uncertainty" than China or Russia is highly suspect. One of the defining features and advantages of the US capitalistic system is the relative sanctity of private property and enforceable contracts which provide a foundation of "certainty" upon which vibrant commerce can be enabled. Such institutions are completely lacking in communist states which is one of the major reasons for their collapse. I have to question the scholarship behind the presentation of such a comparison. This book is not worth your time or money.

Peters' earlier work, "Fractal Market Analysis", is an excellent introduction to chaos theory applied to financial markets. It's truly one of the most useful finance books I've ever read.

I was therefore shocked and extremely disappointed to find "Patterns in the Dark" to be a collection of vague, banal observations about risk and uncertainty. On the few occasions when Peters attempts to make actual statements of fact, he's wrong as often as he's right (see below). It's almost inconceivable that this book was written by the same person. I can only conclude that Mr. Peters deliberately dumbed down this book in an attempt to reach a broader audience. Unfortunately, he went way too far. That a firm like Wiley would publish a book like this is disturbing.

If you don't mind 200 large-print pages of simplistic generalities, factual errors, anecdotes devoid of insight, and cartoons (no joke), this book is for you. But if you'd like to actually learn something about the nonlinear nature of markets, read Peters' excellent "Fractal Market Analysis".

Finally, for those interested in some details of the factual errors I mentioned above, I'll provide two glaring examples.

First, the author dredges up that old chestnut of probability, the "Monte Hall Dilemma". This is an often-quoted probability question that, while trivial once understood, is counter-intuitive and hence widely misunderstood. Peters gives the correct solution, but he states that the question "has caused a great deal of debate in statistical circles" and that there is "not universal agreement" on the answer, as if it were some great unsolved problem of mathematics. This is absolute hogwash. While it has caused much confusion among the general public and the press, to someone with a basic knowledge of probability, or to anyone willing to make the effort to really think about it, it's a very simple problem.

Second, and much more disturbing, is the author's assertion that "Darwin was essentially wrong", that "the basic premise of Darwinian evolution has deep flaws". This conclusion is based on his profound misunderstanding of Darwin's theory. Peters' argument is essentially as follows: the number of possible combinations of genes in even the most simple organism is astronomical, so to "search through these combinations to find the best one" would take "longer than the age of the known universe". Of course, as any high school biology student should know, Darwinian natural selection has absolutely nothing to do with the absurd notion of exhaustively "trying out" every possible organism that could conceivably exist. If the author is interested in understanding what Darwin actually theorized, and why nearly all biologists now think he was essentially right, I would refer him to Darwin's own "The Origin of Species", and to the excellent books by Richard Dawkins.

Ever the standard bearer for the rational approach in the complacent and often hide-bound practices of most people to the world of financial-economics, Peters makes a compelling and ultimately convincing case for the paradigm of complexity to supplant that of equilibrium.

Lest the rank-and-file practitioner forget, the most humble methods one has for interpreting any information in the market have their conceptual grounding from the 1930's application of equilibrium in physics to economics. These humble methods include the Portfolio Theory of the 1970s and Graham & Dodd of the 1930s. What most practitioners fail to appreciate is that once that conceptual foundation is changed from equilibrium to complexity, every metric and every conclusion drawn from those metrics change also.

The changes Peters highlights, while based on solid science, challenge much of the convetional wisdom. It is the millenium and age of enlightenment. Investors should treat themselves to some of the same and read this book.

Christopher MAY - author Nonlinear Pricing