economics-times

I wrote this book. And rather than tell you how great it is (what else would you expect me to say? ;-) I'll just give you a preview of what the book offers. I've been a self-employed nurse entrepreneur for since 1980, and this book distills my experiences, and show you how you can take control of your life and nursing career.

(1) visualizing your future will change your life. how to do it. p. 8

(2) what you should (mentally speaking) never take your eyes off of. p. 8

(3) the difference between dreams and goals. p. 9

(4) resolving contradictory goals. p. 10

(5) the 3 most important questions you can ask about your life. pages 13-14

(6) putting your dreams into reality. p. 15

(7) the crucial question to ask when you fail. p. 17

(8) what's the opposite of success? (hint: it's not failure ...) p. 17

(9) the crucial question to ask about any dream. p. 19

(10) an important mental exercise that will tell you what's important to you in your career. p. 23

(11) positioning yourself for career success. pages 27-30

(12) getting business to come to you even when you don't like sales. pages 31-32

(13) hints on buying equipment for your business (one of these hints saved me over $200 -- over 90% off what I would have normally paid for the piece of equipment -- one time). pages 34-35

(14) what distinguishes winners from losers. p. 35

(15) 68 nursing business career ideas requiring little or no money to start. pages 44-46

(16) an easy way to "get your feet wet" in nursing self-employment. pages 48-49

(17) the one thing that you should never say about your competitors. p. 61

(18) 2 books (in addition to this one!) that changed my life. (they will probably change your's, too). p. 71

I welcome additional questions about this book. I'm here to help.

Jim Huffman

huffmanjim@hotmail.com

This book is very deceptive in its simplicity. It explains how errors can and do occur. The theme is 'if you know what can go wrong, you can do something about it'. Filled with examples of how simple (and not so simple) mistakes can happen and the sometimes tragic consequences. Excellent reading for managers, engineers and anyone interested in understanding and reducing errors- including the typo in the one line summary.

I have read countless books, but this one has become a part of my daily readings that I left on my desk for daily reviews.

I recommend it to all people, ages and trades.

In the first chapter, author Amy Saltzman says, "...as I have conducted my own extensive interviews with professionals across the country, the yearning for change has become more pronounced. While the fast track and its accompanying imagery of career achievement still has its appeal, there is a pervasive feeling that we have drastically overemphasized its importance; that as individuals and as a society we need to reinvent our notion of success."

Saltzman then identifies the five innovative "downshifting" strategies, and presents real-life stories for each: Back-trackers (who choose self-demotion in order to have more time and less stress); Plateauers (who intentionally stay in place and in control by turning down promotions); Career-shifters (who transfer their skills to less pressured fields); Self-employers (who go solo for more control over work hours and location); and Urban Escapees (who opt for more hospitable, less stressful environments).

Saltzman's book was one of the first books I ever read on the topic of living a balanced life and I found her research, insights, and real-life stories a great encouragement. I finished her book convinced that I wasn't crazy to NOT want life in the fast lane and success as society was defining it. I also had hope that taking risks and faith steps to live my life at a manageable pace would reap great rewards. As Saltzman said, "Reinventing success often comes down to accepting less, and realizing that by doing so, we actually gain more."

Celso Furtado is essential reading in all economics courses in Brazil. His analysis of poverty as the result of an export oriented model (as opposed to an economy focused on its own needs, such as that of the U.S., ever since its beginning) became a classic that effected all economic thought in Brazil. Furtado's focus goes from the early XVI century Brazil until the Vargas years of import substitution and industrialization. I strongly recommend this book to any American who wishes to go beyond the usual prejudices about South America and understand some of the issues that lead to under-development. A nice complementary reading is Maria da Conceição Tavares's writings about import-substitution.

Gollier has written a book that not many others could have written. It is VERY complete, it is full of deep insights, and, for me, it is a pleasure to read. Don't be mistaken: this is a research book, not a textbook. But for those of us doing research in decision theory, general equilibrium, finance, or macroeconomics, it is simply a must. How could you afford NOT to buy it?

Reviewing this lecture, Richard Feringer wrote that this was both the most comprehensive and most concise expression by Rosenstock-Huessy on time and its basic meaning to society, as opposed to the meaning of time in natural science.
"Economy" has two meanings; pre-dating 1800, it meant that from the house of God, "plenty" was created out of the wilderness. After 1800, following Adam Smith and Karl Marx, it came to mean simply the production of goods and services, buying and selling. The old meaning inferred sacrifice was necessary to become a human being - the new meaning inferred an avoidance of sacrifice. The old meaning also meant we must be convinced we are not wild animals and were within the House of God and were obligated to maintain an orderly house. The new meaning omitted community strictures.
The purpose of this lecture is to explore these two different meanings of economy and to re-establish an integration of the two. Five 1-hour lectures.
In "Economy of Times - 1965" Rosenstock-Huessy writes:
~~...all modern philosophy does is to omit one little thing: sacrifice. ...the economy of our creation is a very difficult one, because it demands from you and me the - as a first admission, that we are the victims in the process. God's world cannot stand without sacrifice. - November 16, 1965
"Economy of Times - 1965" can also be ordered from Argo Books (www.argobooks.org), as can all the rest of Rosenstock-Huessy's English language works, including many of the lectures he gave on these topics. The lectures alone comprise more than 5000 pages of spontaneous comments he made to students from 1949 to 1968.

This book outlines in easy to follow steps how to get papers under control and how to find what you have easily. It has excellent tips on how to organize your home office and make your workday more productive. It was just what I was looking for.

After reading Larry Burkett's fantasies ("Coming Economic Earthquake", "Illuminati", and "Thor Conspiracy" to name a few), it was a real joy to read a book written by an individual with knowledge of macroeconomics and not merely a personal financial advisor. Burkett's books are thinly veiled conspiracy tripe and Sherman Smith's book is a well-written and thoroughly informed antedote to Burkett's far right wing conspiracy nonsense. Burkett's predictions have already been proven false, so that is all the more reason to look to a sane approach such as Smith takes. Highly recommended!

This much welcomed volume begins with the disquieting fact that high-energy, chemical-input and intensive farming continues as the dominant model for agricultural development, with all its increasingly unacceptable hazards to human health, ecosystems and the landscape. As an alternative, the book looks to the development of more sustainable, productive and less destructive forms of resource use. However, this depends not only on the redesigning of the agronomic and technical make-up of farming but also on the development of organisational and human capacities aimed at maintaining and enhancing the natural resource base. Essential to this task is building of improved institutional frameworks for facilitating learning about the potentialities and difficulties of sustainalbe agricultural and environmental practice, as well as new methodologies geared towards understanding and improving forms of collective action. The various chapters - some build upon case studies, other addressing policy intervention and outcomes, and yet others exploring underlying theoretical issues - tothether add up to a formidable collection that explores the many analytical and practical problems entailed. Although the authors differ somewhat in their treatment of the notion of 'sustainability' - a slippery concept in the best of writings - one finishes reading the book convinced that here we have a work that makes a valuable contribution to the general debates on sustainable resource use by its emphasis on the emergent properties of collective decision-making. Many of the contributors have longstanding experience of participatory types of interventions and research at the level of farming populations: they now turn their experience and expertise to deal with more complex issues associated with the roles of 'local' and 'external' actors in the management of larger scale agro-ecological systems. The book identifies social constructivism as the epistemological basis for addressing social learning processes and organisational practices central to managing sustainability, since actors often disagree over the definition of the problems for solution and the means to be used. In other words we are confronted by 'multiple realities' which militate against concerted action aimed at specific objectieves. The building of bridges between these differing social worlds rests then on an awareness of how social coalitions and common points of view are and can be constructed socially. While participatory approaches recognise the necessity of such 'social' work, it has only recently that the theoretical potential of social constructivism has been taken up systematically in applied fields such as agricultural extension. The present volume represents a clear affirmation of the usefulness of this approach. The chapters of the volume are grouped into five parts. Part I consists of an introductory chapter which provides a general theroretical and thematic overview of the book. This is followed by two other contributions - one which identifies and criticizes policy options for supporting sustainalbe agriculture, and the other which offers a stimulating elucidation of the underlying philosophical and theoretical foundations of a new social-learning approach that addresses the issues of 'facilitating learning through making things visible, helping people to reconstruct realities through experimentation, discourse, observation and meaningful experience' (Woodhill and Röling, p. 68), and it points to the importance of creating 'new platforms' of understanding between the various (potential conflicting) actors necessary for the successful management of ecosystems. Part II explores the dynamics of environmental policy implementation and farmer responses in three contrasting European cases: Switzerland, Greece and the Netherlands. The examples differ in the extent ot which farmers were involved or involved themselves in the development of these policy frameworks. Part III concentrates on issues relating to how farmers learn about and implement measures towards sustainalbe agriculture. Here the examples and issues are taken up range widely: from Europe (four Dutch experimental projects dealing with sustainable arable agriculture, and eco-farming in Germany), Asia (problems of integrated pest mananagement in Indonesia, and lessons learnt from Asian user-responsive, participatory agricultural research) and Australia (a government initiated participatory learning and research programme aimed at improved fallow management). Part IV moves the discussion to consider the processes involved in 'platform' building at rural and larger agro-ecological systems or water catchment levels. The chapters focus on the building of learning 'communities' concerned with sustainable agricultural practice. Contributing chapters are from the USA (methods and experiences of THe W.K. Kellogg Foundations's integrated farming systems programme), Australia (Landcare movement) and the Netherlands ('nature' policy). The concluding chapter (part V) offers a useful analytical overview of hte many interrelated arguments presented earlier. It underlines that the main contirbution of the book lies in its empahsis on 'what ecologically sound practice implies for the human actors involved'', - not only farmers but land users and other stakeholders interested in the countryside, and its analyses how conditions for generating favourable change might be created. Yet as the authors persuasively argue, the critical conditions are not, as economists are prone to suggest, primarily related to pricing and fiscal inducements; but rather they result from the complex social interplay of 'policy, institutional and behavioural change'. This book, then, deserves to be read and its arguments assessed not only by practising communication, participatory research and agro-ecological specialists, but also by all those interested in rural change and development. Scholars and students of sociology, anthropology and political economy would, I believe, particularly benefit from plunging somewhat more into the 'worlds of practice'.