economics-times

Don Aslett's books on cleaning and home organization/design are indeed classics. However, currently, there are indeed, much better books that can help with coping with time by S. Covey, L.B. Jones, B. Tracy, J. Davidson, and K. Gleeson.

If you enjoy Aslett's books on clutter, then you'll probably enjoy this one too. It has many tips scattered throughout that I've found useful in managing a home, a job, a family, and a gazillion interests. I disagree with him on some details, but I found a lot to think about and try out in my own life.

With 500 tips I have to admit that I found some good ideas but I didn't like the book. Whether he meant to or not Aslett comes off as that guy everyone in the office can't stand. Some of his ideas simply don't stand up to workplace reality and others were clearly written by a guy who hasn't sat in a cubicle in many years.

Decent book, not quite up to par with Aslett's best books. Plenty of good ideas for minimizing overhead at work and concentrating on the "real" task that needs to get done. I take some exception at his recommendations to work evenings and weekends when needed - I think most purchasers of the book want to simplify their work life so they can get out of the office on time and enjoy the rest of their life. i.e. working overtime is one of the biggest components of a *non-simple* work life.

If you work outside the home, and want to assuage guilt, then the book may work for you. For moms at home, look for a better book.

I have read a number of books by Neale Godfrey and I always learn from them! Maybe it's because Godfrey has been a working (single) mother for many years, but she really knows what we are up against. Her advice is good, it's simple and it's presented in a very funny way! I recommend this book!

I have read Mr. Train's earlier books The Money Masters and The New Money Masters and found them informative and interesting, gaining insights from some of the worlds most sucessful investors. Mr. Train's research seemed to rely heavily on personal interviews of these Masters often providing the reader with unique investment philosophies not readily available elsewhere. I especially recommend Mr. Train's first book in this series The Money Masters because this book moved me away from the trading of stocks and futures as practiced by Robert Wilson the short seller and Stanly Kroll the great commodity speculator. The techniques they employed seemed too elusive and fraught with risk and if this was the basis of the trading game it was not the game for me. I was instead attracted to the similer philosophies of mentor and student Ben Grahman and Warren Buffett. Looking at a stock as a share of a business not a piece of paper with a number on it. This was the first time I had been exposed to the wisdom of these two investors and I am grateful to Mr. Train for revealing to the public their methods. The problem I have with the current rendition is that it really adds nothing new. In fact Mr. Train seems to have copied parts of the first Money Masters and spliced them into this version. I may be wrong but it doesn't seem that the effort or creativity that went into the original went into this work. Another sort of irritating quality in this instance thankfully not present in the first book is Mr. Train's need to psychoanalyze some of his subjects especially Mr. Buffett. This adds an edge to the book that is not worthy of Mr. Train.

The bookshelves are full of books containing descriptions of ways to invest based on historical data and models that have not been very fully tested in practice. However, in most areas of human endeavor, a great deal is learned by studying those who are and have been the best for a long time. Money manager John Train has been playing this role for some time with his outstanding books, The Money Masters and The New Money Masters. For about two years, I have been wondering what John Train thinks about the current financial markets. I was delighted to see that he had created an updated and revised sequel to his earlier works.

One of the strengths of John Train's work in this area is that he knows the people he writes about, and the chapters contain discussions he has had with them in most cases. So you get new information that you have not read before in the financial press. He also does a good job of picking a variety of styles and personality types, so you get A to Z with some letters skipped in between in these 17 profiles. These include (in order of presentation): T. Rowe Price; Warren Buffett; John Templeton; Richard Rainwater; Paul Cabot; Philip Fisher; Benjamin Graham; Mark Lightbown; John Neff; Julian Robertson; Jim Rogers; George Soros; Philip Carret; Michael Steinhardt; Ralph Wanger; Robert Wilson; and Peter Lynch. Amongst these men, you will find a variety of growth investors, value investors, those who look to undiscovered markets, intense analysts of trends and individual companies, hedge fund operators, shorts, small cap specialists, and those who focus on emerging foreign markets. It's quite a ride. Naturally, if any of them interest you, you can go further in other sources and learn more.

Warren Buffett, John Templeton, Paul Cabot, Benjamin Grapham, Jim Rogers, George Soros, Robert Wilson, and Peter Lynch have always been people I have learned from, and I was glad they were included. I did not know much about Mark Lightbown and was glad to learn more.

A major strength of the book is that Mr. Train goes on the sum up what it all seems to mean. He says these people validate four styles that work:

"1. Buy into well-managed companies that will grow . . . . When they slow down, sell them and buy new ones.

2. . . . buy stocks that are priced . . . at less than their underlying assets and sell them when they are reasonably priced.

3. Discover a new investment area or one that is . . . neglected . . . .

4. Identify a really good specialist to do the job for you . . . ."

He has a good list of common practices that almost each of the 17 do, that you should find very helpful, as well.

Finally, he talks about what you can expect for the future. He sees the reasonable returns from growth stocks to be 13-14 percent in the future (down from 20 percent in his last book). He still thinks that is a good way to go, but also counsels on when and how to use mutual funds (when they are cheap and give you access to a category you cannot buy efficiently on your own).

He constantly reminds the reader that most investors will earn less than the market average. Rather than sending you to index funds, as many authors do, he feels that by using the lessons here that he outlines, you can hope to do somewhere near or above the average. But you have to be very careful. His philosophy is a variation on the buy and hold growth stock advice that many advocate, but his reasoning and support for the conclusions are more sound.

It would be interesting to see what the stock portfolios do of those who read this book and follow its advice over the next 20 years.

Personally, I am not convinced that the average reader can take even this excellent book and outperform the market. But if you decide to do so, I sincerely hope you succeed.

In any event, you can certainly avoid many costly errors by paying attention to Mr. Train's list of things to avoid doing!

After you have read the book, ask yourself in what other areas of your life outstanding expert case histories could help you improve by overcoming bad habits and developing better ones. Then go find and apply those case histories!

While I agree with Steffanie Gibbons' view that the Waters' memoir is well-written, in that it flows with the pen of an accomplished writer, but I cannot not agree with a rating of five stars. The "intimate" picture portrayed gives a thin image of his artist friends. Moreover this picture is one of, somewhat desperate, people seeking to be significant as artists, but coming off more like hangers-on. After reading the book, Taos has lost much of the well manicured luster as an artist center, and comes off more like a tourist trap.

In this well-written memoir, Frank Waters shares intimate details of his friendships with many of the artists who lived in Taos, New Mexico during the Mabel Dodge Luhan era. A pulitzer prize-winning author, Waters uses his talent with the pen to acquaint the reader with his artist friends in Taos and tell his own life story. Waters also shares his exploration of the history of Native Americans in the Four Corners area. If anyone is qualified to write about the art world in Taos at that time, it is certainly Frank Waters. A must-read for those interested in the Southwest.

Geared for the traveler who is beginning to travel on business. Much of the information here is not enlightening to the seasoned business traveler. More common sense than breakthrough information.

Very helpful! The ideas suggested are practical, applicable to real life business travel, and imaginative too. Highly recommend this book for business travellers and anyone else who needs to get things done while on the go.

Modern medicine is one of the great successes of industrial civilization. This remarkable progress, however, has come at a very high price. In the USA, for example, we spend close to 15% of our GNP on health care. We are the champion health care spendthrift of developed world but other industrialized countries spend huge amounts on health care. It is not surprising that huge pressures are exerted to hold down costs; HMO management in the USA, waiting lists for complex procedures in many countries; restricted access to specialists in Great Britain. All of these cost containment involve rationing of health care services. It is a surprise, then, that this good book is one of the few to explicitly address rationing of health care. Dr. Ubel makes a series of cogent, indeed, commonsense points. Rationing is common. Rationing is inevitable in any system without infinite resources. Physicians, even those who believe that they are not rationing health care, either practice rationing at the bedside and are enmeshed in systems that make rationing decisions. Ubel decries properly the existence of this type of implicit rationing and argues instead that since rationing is inevitable, physicians should participate in explicit and rational efforts to ration care. This leads Ubel to a series of interesting recommendations. One is that physicians are in the best position to make certain kinds of rationing decisions, "bedside rationing', because they can individualize care and are best able to attempt to reconcile the needs of patients with the existence of limited resources. Ubel is an advocate of a certain type of utilitarian analysis, cost effective analysis (CEA), as a tool for deciding the value of tests and interventions. He exposes the limitations of CEA carefully and suggests ways in which it might be improved in order to become a useful tool. I think this book is primarily aimed at academic physicians with the hope of influencing physician education and approach to this kind of difficult problem. In this respect, this is a successful effort.

There are several problems with the book. As Ubel acknowledges, it is not a rigorous or systematic book, but more polemical in spirit. There is definitely a need for a major systematic work(s) on this topic. Another problem is Ubel's recommendation of CEA. He is very clear about the limitations of this method but he recommends it because he views it as flexible enough to incorporate societal preferences. Even if this were methodologically possible, I doubt this would work in the USA. In relatively homogeneous and consensus oriented countries like Sweden or Japan, this approach would have real value. It has, however, been a long time since Americans reached consensus on many, many fundamental issues related to values, and this situation is unlikely to change. Finally, Ubel does not go far enough. Given resource limitations, methods like CEA,which help make choices among tests and interventions, will not address the really tough issues regarding who should receive care and how much is appropriate. These are horribly difficult problems but must be faced squarely.

Dr. Peter Ubel has written and important and useful book. He describes very clearly how medical care in the U.S. is already being rationed--even though we might not call it 'rationing,' or even realize it. He gives clear examples of how that process is being taken place; the arguments for and against it; and a very coherent argument that medical rationing will continue, and grow, because it is economically inevitable.

This book is important because it tells the reader that rationing will take place--with or without an informed patient role. It is up to those who receive medical care to understand what's at stake to make sure they do play an active part in the decision-making process.

The book is very clearly written, but more examples, particularly in the latter part of the book, would make is more readable.

Trades off cycle analysis and various indicators (detrended, money flow, open interest) and divergences. I can't say I will be using any of the methods in this book , but it is written well and explained well .. and for that it gets another star.

Has developed an oscillator which factors in volume to the oscillator equations. It is very good at picking short term tops and bottoms. He has also defined a stop point that gets taken out only when price has reversed prematurely. I have made money with this but I believe you must study it for awhile to be successful.

This book is mostly about clearing clutter, not about overcoming procrastination. There are some useful tips, but most of it is a rehash of things I've read before. Some of the content seems disorganized. There is even one full paragraph that is nothing but one cliche after another about how to motivate yourself. In fairness, the book seems to have been developed from a workshop series, and I can see how it would go well in such a setting. But if you are dealing with problems of procrastination, this book won't really help. If you are dealing with lots of clutter, you can find more and better ideas elsewhere.

An easy-to-read book packed with ideas that I was easily able to incorporate into my life. The author made it fun for me to once again get control of my house and paperwork. I highly recommend this book to the most disorganized of pack rats anywhere.

This book was a disappointment. I found it to have several chapters of vague generalities and typical small business boilerplate that I don't want to pay for.

It definitely does not give me the information I need to know to start a tour operator business. The most important example of it is it simply says nothing whatsoever about insurance and how to protect yourself from liability. That in itself should be an absolute condemnation of the book.

The only reason I didn't give it 1 star is it says a bit about how to guide a tour, which someone might find slightly useful, but overall, the book is not worth buying.

This book gives an in-depth look at the tour guiding industry. The authors provide invaluable travel tips from behind the scenes. Included are checklists of travel items, examples, and an Appendix filled with useful travel organizations. Anyone who enjoys travelling and would like to make money doing it, should pick up this book.