family-economics

This is much more inspiring than the usual frugality books, which teach how to save money for money's sake. This book made me realize how being frugal and careful with the resources I have can have an impact on the world and others' lives. I am much more appreciative of what I have and use my resources much more carefully now.

Some may be turned off by the biblical quotes, but I didn't find them to be intrusive while reading the text. Readers need to remember that this is a book written by a Mennonite woman, whose faith was integral to the way she lived her life, and that most of the testimonials are from missionaries in other countries. I found the approach refreshing and insightful.

Expectations
Accountability
Feedback

Dr. Tom's simple, yet comprehensive approach to the subject of 'bringing out the best' has already worked in my professional and personal conversations. My business partners, friends (and even mom) appreciate the fresh, clear perspective that I have gained and applied after reading "bringing out the best."

As with all books, there is nothing new inside it's pages, but this book offers such a fresh, understandable, useable and SIMPLE approach that I highly recommend "Bringing Out the Best in Others!" I have already started giving copies away to those around me.

Like one of the author's other books, "Inside the Magic Kingdom," this book is a classic and one that everyone on the team will benefit from reading. Enjoy this book and pass it on to those around you; it makes a difference!

After a couple weeks, surely enough, I did start to see the kind of results! My subordinate began to really respond and her performance began to improve dramatically.

I highly recommend the quick read, and am sure you'll get life long benefits from bringing out the best in others!

This can be a difficult, time consuming read, but it does an excellent job of explaining how life insurance works. The book does not pander to one type of insurance over another. It does give you crucial information about plan types that can help you make the right decision for you. Once you understand the book, you can easily look at an insurance contract and understand the most important fine points. I could stump the agent with the most basic of questions! Cut through their sales tactics. Now that is power!

Most books which cover this subject approach it in a bland, dry textbook manner. I've read several and have found myself reading the same paragraph over and over--not so with THE Y2K PERSONAL PREPAREDNESS GUIDE! Each chapter begins with insights and intriguing examples. There are splashes of Hyatt's humor which manage to relieve the tension of so somber a subject.

This is an extremely well thought out book, meticulously researched, exploring every aspect we might possibly encounter--for example, even a chapter on what to do with human waste.

I will see to it that each of my grown children have a copy, and then breathe a sigh of relief, secure in the knowledge that they'll be well-equipped for any eventuality Y2K might bring.

The Tooheys give a number of concrete examples of ways to cut expenses. They also call into question a number of the assumptions we make as a result of our brainwashing by modern media. For example: Why does a family really need more than one full bath in a house?

To someone fully immersed in our culture's consumer rat-race, the Tooheys are going to seem a bit radical. We are all a bit too accustomed to focusing on convenience and immediacy rather than long term cost. Try to keep an open mind and remember that the best things in life can't be found in a shopping mall.

It is cumpulsively readable, like a good novel. This book became my trusted companion during many relaxing evening hours and solitary restaurant meals.

It is also admirably crafted. As in their previous book The Patriarch (about the Bingham family of the Louisville Courier-Journal), Tifft and Jones write beautifully and with great skill for handling detail and narrative.

They also have the ability to balance candor and fairness, steering a sober, high-minded course between warts-and-all skepticism and obsequious hagiography. As a reader you sense you are getting a careful portrait of each major character's personality, strengths, foibles, fond traits, and character flaws, while never getting the feeling the authors are doing either a flack job or a hatchet job.

That's not to say certain characters don't come off better than others. For example, the authors seem consistently sympathetic toward the modestly talented, often hapless but usually wise "Punch" Sulzberger, the dominant figure at the Times from the mid 60s through the mid 90s, while casting his wife Carol as a shallow, cold-hearted Nancy Reagan type. But the book rings of truth and authority, and so one generally trusts the authors' assessments.

While this book overwhelmingly is concerned with people, not events, it provides a valuable account of the internal debates over whether and how to publish the Pentagon Papers. It also illustrates the paper's vigorous post-war anti-communism, its cozy relationship with the Eisenhower administration, its internal battles over editorial voice during the political and cultural upheavals of the 1970s, and its generational differences over homosexuality (contrasting Punch's bigotry with his son and successor Arthur Jr.'s determination to make the Times a progressive place for gays to work). Two consistent threads run throughout the book: the Sulzbergers' ambivalence over their Jewish heritage, and their determination to place journalistic excellence and family control of the paper over the business strategems and high profits necessary to please Wall Street.

This book will be of great interest to journalism junkies. But it also commends itself to all lovers of serious biography.

I also used excerpts of this book in one of my women's studies classes and the students enjoyed it. Many of the re-entry students actually told me that they either checked it out at the library or purchased the book.

I perused the reviews and was amused at how some reviewers felt that this book was whiny. Why is it that when we disagree we have to say that she (usually a woman under attack!) is whining. Motherhood isn't all bread and roses and this book explains why.

"Not again!" I hear you mutter, "Another Feminist ranting & raving about how downtrodden are women who choose to become wives, who choose to become mothers." Well they are, legally & financially! What price motherhood? Dare we count the cost?

The costs of motherhood are apparent everywhere: college-educated women pay a "mommy tax" in lost income when they have a child; family law deprives mothers of financial equality within marriage; childcare & elder care(essentially female fields of work) are not figured into the GNP; at-home mothers are not counted in the labor force & social security simple ignores mothers & housewives - at best offering them half of their husbands' pensions in old age.

With chapters entitled: The Invention of the Unproductive Housewife; The Mommy Tax; The Dark Little Secret of Family Life; What Is A Wife Worth?; Who Really Owns the Family Wage?; Who Pays for the Kids?; The Welfare State Versus a Caring State; The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love; An Accident Waiting to Happen & It Was Her Choice, Ann Crittenden takes us through the maze of innuendo, law, history & prejudice that plague women who become full time wives & mothers & casts them as economic untouchables.

A very good read & one I hope everyone contemplating marriage & parenthood would read to see how they, in their private relationship, can balance the books so that both partners & parents are of equal value, to themselves & their society. Do check out my eInterview with Ann Crittenden - an interviewer's dream: she takes the questions & runs! I think you'll like it!