economics-times

Ruff's been preparing for economic catastrophe for 30 years. Now he's added moralistic sermons to the cataclysmic mix. In the 1970s, Ruff told us to buy gold and fill our basements with silver and food, then nothing happened. In 1999, he told us to buy gold and fill our basements with silver and food for Y2K, then nothing happened. You think the gullible public will ever learn? Is this guy in the food or gold business? Or does he sell generators? Ruff blames America's problems on welfare and the breakdown of the family even though welfare rolls are reducing rapidly, he demonizes Clinton even though the economy is the best in 35 years, and he tells us sex outside marriage is breaking down America and causing (guess what?) more welfare and the breakdown of America, Social Security insolvency, and a pile of liars. Ruff has 13 children and 48 grandchildren so more power to him for his solid religious and family life, but it ain't exactly a model of restraint! He wants the government to be there with Social Security, but blames the government for regulations. His 70's book was poignant and thought-provoking; this one, for me at least, couldn't cut mustard.

Having met the author personally several times, I know that he truly does walk the talk. This book deals not only with y2k preparation, but, generally in getting your life financially and generally prepared for any catastrophe. If this book falls short in any area it would be that it focuses on those who are already financially set. It would seem absurd for anyone living from pay check to pay check to aquire some of the basics the author recommends. Also, Howard paints a picture of gloom and doom, which may put some readers off a little. However, as he writes in his book, "hope for the best possible scenario, but prepare for the worst." Personally, I would love to see Howard Ruff, or someone with his inegrity to run for president. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, cover to cover.

A am glad to see an author of Howard Ruff's reputation weighing in to the fight for truth. He was there in the 1970s and again two decades later to shine a little reality on a foggy situation. Clear, understandable advice on what is likely to happen with the banking systems and social security and how to assess the impact on one's life, health and finances.

I also recommend The Survivor's Guide to The Year 2000 by David Epp as it had compelling reasons to invest in the metals because of Y2K - and most interesting - even if it were not for Y2K. With the FED printing money at over 10 percent, inflation is sure to raise its ugly head very soon. The question is what next and when? These two books clarified that for me perfectly. I am ready and will be prepared thanks to two very well researched books.

I bought this book because my work is in information reporting and I thought it would provide an interesting perspective. It did succeed at that. Because I come from a technical background, I had a little trouble getting started with the book, until I released it was written from a sociology background. Once I got past that I enjoyed the book except for the ...

extremely poor editing. There were numerous grammatical and sentence structure errors, contradicting statements misspellings and general redundancy that really detracted from the information being presented.

This book was interesting, but the editing was so poor that I started to mistrust what I was reading. For instance the famous first telegraph message "What hath God wrought" was printed as "What God hath wrought." The book is full of typos.

This book is a collection of essays on the movement of information, and how it has transformed the United States from its colonial beginnings to today. At the very beginning, the founders of the country subsidized the transportation of newspapers through the postal system; this allowed the free flow of information between cities and states, across the entire continent. As technology increased, it inevitably speeded and expanded the amount of information flowing throughout the country--from the railroad, through the telegraph, telephone, radio, motion pictures, television, and on into computers.

This book is an exciting history of information media. Though written by no less than seven contributors, it pulls together into seamless whole, almost as if written by one author. The depth of information is breathtaking, and the conclusions reached are fascinating. Indeed, I think that they admirably proved their contention that there was continuity in the development of information media, and I myself repeatedly saw history repeat itself through their narrative, right up to today.

This is a fascinating book, and one that I recommend without reservation.

Have you ever had a consultant come in start off trying to explain what he's doing and you look at him funny. The consultant then goes in and does his thing. A few months later after the consultant's changes have had time to settle, get the edges off, etc. you go 'he had some pretty good ideas' I'm glad we hired him. That's sort of how this book is. In the beginning the author starts off explaining his theory and ideas and you kind of go "ummm yeah okay". Then he starts to put it into practice and you go "okay I see using part of that and some of this would work for my business" and at the end he brings it all together and half the stuff he said in the beginning was semi-useless, but you can see why he said it, and it comes together and you say "I can see how this would improve things". Overall I give the book a StuPage C.

This book has a few good nuggets, but the rest is filled with the same consultant-speak techno-hype that has been played before. This myth of a "new economy" should have been destroyed by the dot-bomb, or by the recent accounting scandals, or by the recession. We seem to forget that it is execution that counts. When will we realize that you can't build sustainable competitive advantages through technology. You can build more efficient operations, have better means of collecting, analyzing and using information, and respond in a much more rapid way to stakeholder needs; yet technology is only as good as the fundamental execution of your business. If you want a more enlightening, practical guide on technologies that will make an immediate difference, try "Going Wireless"; if you want to concentrate on strategic "blocking and tackling" pick up "Execution".

A Must Read for the business executive. I found its advice to be enormously helpful in this particularly challenging time.

The book offers basic information on how to invest and save money, but, that's all it does. The book is more appropriate for someone at a later stage of their life, and for someone who has no idea how one should save or invest money. If you already know the basic information about investing, then this book is not for you.

If ever there were a standard primer for financial information, my vote would be this book. What a wonderful gift this book would make for a newly married couple, or even a daughter who has just graduated high school or college. A son, too for that matter! As someone who has never had much extra money, I just recently graduated from college and am now pursuing full time employment, I know that when I begin bringing in that second income, that I will want to have some education on what to do with it. I bought this book for that purpose. It is a basic information book that provides vital facts and figures to anyone needing advice in regards to insurance, 401K, stocks, bonds, retirement and ect. For someone who has just a limited knowledge of these topics, this book will be a Godsend. A child could read and understand the concepts presented in this book. It gives resources for more information as well. Pick up this book and you will expand your financial horizons! The book is written in a very casual, witty and motherly type fashion. It will make you warm and fuzzy! And perhaps even fatten your wallet

I purchased this book expecting it to cater to someone beyond University level. However, the contents clearly cater for high school level learning and therefore provided little value to me. If you are looking to strengthen your technical and analytical skills look somewhere else. If you want basic training, give it a try.

This insightful book proved worth its weight in gold. A must read for any entrepreneur looking for serious funding.

Obviously patched together from topics written over a period of time, this book is not cohesive nor understandable. Mills doesn't spend any words developing his topics nor explaning the development. Spend your resources on Hamilton's classic and great definative bible, Time Series Analysis instead.

This is a very compact, practical book. It edits in a very readable way. What I like it most is that it contributes to non-linear time series analysis a lot, whereas not too many other time series related books do. The real data in the appendix can be downloaded and played around by the readers. You will really have a great time to read it.

A must have for any new manager or supervisor. Provides great advise for almost any situation you may find yourself in. Read it through and keep handy for reference!

This book was helpful for me to consider ways to address certain touchy topics. New to supervising, I did not want to give my employees an opening to exploit. No book will solve all problems, but this one did help me through some tough times.

I reviewed the third edition of this book for the American Statistician in 1994. The book covers most of the important topics for an applied course and has a reasonable list of references. There are many examples and homework exercises. Statistical software packages such as SAS and MINITAB are used throughout in example problems. The early chapters cover the basics of statistical inference and regression (Chapters 2-5). This material can be skipped in a first time series course if introductory statistics is a prerequisite.

The latter chapters cover time series regression, seasonal decomposition methods, exponential smoothing and Box-Jenkins methods. But this book does not include nonlinear time series models and it overlooks the recent and popular state space approach to time series modeling. Multivariate time series methods are also left out, though perhaps they are more appropriate for an advanced or second course in time series analysis.

The cookbook nature of the text can be found in the guidelines given for Box-Jenkins model identification. The statistical theory that the methods rely on is avoided. Although a number of important probability distributions are used with their relevant statistical tables, the underlying assumptions and distributional theory is completely avoided. Important concepts such as the central limit theorem and the concept of a stationary stochastic process are given only very brief treatment. Other concepts are oversimplified to avoid the need for the development of any distribution theory.

This book will serve well for a course in which the student is interested in how to implement exponential smoothing and the general class of Box-Jenkins models through the use of standard statistical packages. However if the instructor wants depth of understanding the text is not adequate. Frequecy domain methods often useful in engineering applications are not even discussed.

While the book covers forecasting applications, it does not consider applications to decomposition of variance or discriminant analysis. Time series methods are also applicable in these contexts. Abraham and Ledolter (1984) "Statistical Methods for Forecasting" cover the same topics but in much greater depth. Also Janacek and Swift (1993) "Time Series: Forecasting, Simulation, Applications" is slightly more advanced and provides broader coverage. Anyone interested in the theory can consult a number of good books including the latest edition of Brockwell and Davis "Time Series: Theory and Methods". Shumway and Stoffer (2000) "Time Series Analysis and Its Applications" is up-to-date, comprehensive and has many good engineering applications.

This book covers step by step methodology and theory for the basic time series concepts. It has worked out examples with even the most rudimentary calculations demonstrated for complex subjects like ARMA and Box-Cox decomposition. It is a good book for basic practitioners and those with a basic interest in time series analysis

If you already have Gleeson's "The Personal Efficiency Program : How to Get Organized to Do More Work in Less Time," don't buy this. It has pretty much the same information. It's not "high-tech" at all. Most of the book is like a Computer 101 class. I'm quite disappointed, since I was looking for ways to organize my electronic resources, NOT "how do I create a folder in Win95."

Simplicity is the greatest strength of Gleeson's suggestions for saving time and literally cleaning up your act. She appears to realize that the reader's quest to save time should not begin with a book that takes hours to read and assimilate.

If nothing else, follow one of Gleeson's first suggestions: Remove everything in your desk drawers and place it on the top. Talk about Slob, meet Thyself. The incomprehensible handwritten notes, staff memos from 1995 and rubber band collection should inspire you to at least try Gleeson's other suggestions.

The author uses a great approach: first get your low-tech materials organized, and then move onto the high-tech materials. There is a parallel structure applied to both paper and electronic resources, which is really great for organizing. Great book.

Given the academic qualifications of the author, I was expecting a more scholarly treatment of the subject. What I found is a superficial treatment using personal observations with shallow interpretation. Worse, however, were the inaccuracies I spotted. The author confuses yams and sweet potatoes--attributing their origins to South America, South East Asia and perhaps Africa. So called "yams" in this country are sweet potatoes of New World origin. The term "yam" was coined by a clever marketing ploy to elevate the lowly sweet potato in people's minds. A true yam is botanically different and does not grow in this country. Another inaccuracy was the failure to distinguish tortillas from cornbread. Tortillas are made from lye-treated corn which changes the nutrient content in a way to prevent pellagra that was seen in other societies where corn was a major staple food, such as the American South. This is an important distinction. After noting these shortcomings I don't trust anything else in the book that I cannot verify through other sources. The best part of the book is the extensive bibliography at the end.

The text is slightly slow at times, but for the cultural geographer, anthropologer, or cook, it is incredibly insightful. It is repiticious, but that theme refelcts american foodways.

This book presents a concise and clear overview of food habits and customs in the United States. Pillsbury examines regional food differences and traces them back to immigrant or even Native American customs. One of the more interesting aspects of the book is the documentation of how our ideals of what food was like for past generations differ from what they really ate. For instance, Pillsbury stresses the importance of corn meal-based baked goods in the traditional American diet instead of white yeast breads. He also points out how much greater variety of food we have available today, how much safer the food is in terms of contamination, and even how much safer cooking conditions are. The development of restaurants, supermarkets, and cookbooks are described in separate chapters. Contributions of various groups of immigrants are also highlighted, although the author makes no mention of South Asian immigrants, who are certainly beginning to have a noticeable presence in the Northeast. Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in food, food history, US history, or ethnic studies.