Gareth Jones Books

Unfortunately I sold this book during undergrad once my genetics course was over. Now at Medical School, I am rebuying it cause I know it works. Good explanations, pictures, ect. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a straight explanation...it's great if you are not a research based person.

Genetics is confusing. True or false? Genetics is quite enjoyable. True or false?

The answer can be true to either question, depending on which book you use to learn genetics for the first time.

Fortunately for me, our Biology department @BU chose Prof. Hartl's "Genetics." The book comes with nice diagrams to demonstrate certain concepts such as maternal effect and the Hardy Weinberg principle.

Of course, this book isn't perfect; it could use some improvements. Chapter 12--especially the section on bicoid genes in drosophila--took a while to slog through.

I suppose Prof. Hartl tried his best here, but this topic is confusing to begin with. It would have helped if pg 530-541 were rewritten. (I know that sounds very vague and fuzzy, but something about those pages just didn't click like other sections of the book).

Even if your Bio department doesn't use this version of "Genetics," I would recommend treating it as a reference book.

Good luck with genetics! Believe me, it CAN be fun and interesting....

-TheDeliman

ps: To be honest, the GeNETics sections at the end of each chapter were quite useless. Readers won't read much if they were written out of the Fifth Edition.... :)

The authors describe four corporate culture types, give a self test for determining the type of culture that exists in your corporation, then provide detailed descriptions of the culture and the behaviors for success in the culture.

The cultures are mapped using a device called Jophari's Window, which for some reason they have named the Double S square. Each culture is described in terms of its socialability (the influence of relationships on the culture) and solidarity (the influence of the drive to achieve common goals on the culture.) Unfortunately, the authors have chosen names with emotional baggage to describe the four cultures - mercenary, communal, fragmented and networked. Once the reader gets beyond that "mercenary" is not a "bad" culture, the reading gets easier.

Each culture has both a positive and negative side, so in all eight culture types are described. The authors also provide effective ways to determine if the culture is serving or harming the objectives of the company, if the negative or positive aspect is in evidence and provide strategies for moving from one cultural "square" to another. They also provide tips on how to survive and succeed in each type.

I found this book to be very easy to understand and quite accurate in its descriptions. I recognized my company as the "mercenary" type right away! The book not only helps companies who are stuggling to change their culture, but also provides excellent input for people who are considering a job or career change. While not explicitly stated, the job seeker can compare himself to the types of people attracted to each culture and indeed frame questions to use during the job search to determine the culture of prospective employers.

The book is an easy read - accomplished in one or two evenings. The style is lively and engaging. The authors use anecdotes from their many consulting engagements, usually giving the name of the actual company, to provide examples of the cultures, behaviors, and cultural change efforts.

I recommend this book highly to any company seeking to understand and/or change their corporate behavior. I also recommend it to all job seekers, as it can help avoid the costly mistake of accepting a position in a company whose culture does not mesh with the seeker's personality or even sense of ethics.

This edition presents the standard translation of the Communist Manifesto, in use for 120 years, introduced by a long essay exploring the European intellectual ferment that produced the work in 1848. Given the importance of the Manifesto in history, I would have appreciated a different introductory essay, one written with the general reader in mind. By the time I finally reached the text, I still felt ill equipped to understand its unique language and message. I needed a better basic commentary and perhaps a more contemporary translation of the work itself.

Communism is dead as a doornail. Those who think otherwise are simply brainwashed by propaganda and completely ignorant of world history. The Soviet Union collapsed after decades of backwardness and Marxism, not that its economic failure was ever in doubt. Their pseudo-"industrialization" caused huge famines that killed tens of millions, and did not reduce the technological lag that persisted for decades - they were in the stone ages technologically. They were only saved in World War II by American lend-lease shipments, and then donations of grain and wheat. The Soviet Union was a failure, and was lagging behind the West in industrial production, agriculture, military strength, applied science, everything. Their physical indices and statistics (along with the alleged achievements of the military and space program) were proven to be bungled lies and propaganda. Their Marxist economists were incompetent, and failed to solve any planning problems. Those who deny these historical facts are just as pathetic and ignorant as Holocaust deniers or flat-Earthers. Cuba hardly fared any better - it was ruled by a brutal dictatorship, and it is lost to history how many millions were also killed by famines and harebrained government schemes. Those who still doubt this need to WAKE UP, get some sunlight and stop reading pseudo-intellectual tracts like this.

Kinda a pointless book now that communism has been proven ineffective. I guess if you still want to live in this type of society you can move to Russa, China, Cuba etc. Lucky for them they have the US to give them foreign aid. Communism would be dead within a few decades without a capitolistic nation to support it.

...and PLEASE read beyond the Manifesto! Ignore the anti-Marx ideologues who do not actually read him, and give him a shot. Forget, for a minute, all preconceived notions of communism, and take his writings as though they are fresh and brand new. Only then should you proceed on to reading criticism of him, history of Marxism, etc. The reader who is willing to undertake an actual study of Marx will find him infinitely valuable, and very astute on many things.

First, I'd like to (try to) clear up a few misconceptions about Marx that linger implacably in the minds of almost all Americans.

1) The Soviet Union, China, etc. were not Communist societies.
They were brutal dictatorships under the guise of communism, using it as an ideological blanket to mask their terrible atrocities. Moreover, Marx intended for Communism to evolve out of Capitalist societies (i.e., Britain and America during his time), not out of the feudalistic Russia/China. The argument that Communism killed 100 million is just wrong--dictators corrupting the ideas of communism (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc.) did so. So yes, Marx caused the deaths of 100 million in the same way Adam Smith caused the deaths of the Chinese and Irish immigrants who toiled on the railroad--in other words, not at all.

2.) Marxism =/= violence.
In certain places, especially the Manifesto, Marx does permit violence, and, indeed, advocate it. But Marx does not think it NECESSARY--that's the key point. Good Marxist thinkers, and I believe Marx himself, would say that communistic reforms could come just as easily and likely more efficiently from peaceful processes, as we have seen them for the most part in the United States.

3.) Communism is not welfare statism.
In fact, in a, actually realized communist society (unlikely to ever happen, I'll admit) there would be no government. Marx advocated the PEOPLE owning the means of production, not the state. This is a HUGE error that many make when reading Marx. I suspect he was just as distrusting of the state as your average libertarian, he just thought it necessary to rectify some of the wrongs of capitalism and a necessary step toward communism. Note the use of step there: Marx, taking from his predecessor Hegel, believes everything must proceed in steps!!

4.) The Communist Manifesto is not the end-all of communism.
Honestly, the Manifesto is a rather juvenile work compared to many of Marx's other writings, like DAS KAPITAL or GRUNDRISSE. It was intended as a sort of primer to communism, accessible to the common, sparsely-educated worker of Marx's time, and is a better demonstration of Marx/Engel's (everyone forgets about poor Engels!) rhetorical ability than of their thought proper.

I also believe that the Manifesto isn't really the best place to start. It breeds far too many misconceptions about communist thought, partly due to its theatricality, partly due to the way it has been misconstrued throughout the decades. If you do start with the Manifesto, as most people do, PLEASE continue on and read more about Marx! Trust me, it's worth it, and you learn the extreme depth of his theory.

One need only look at their time to understand why Marx and Engels were so infuriated at the capitalist system. Those years of the Industrial Revolution were an exciting and terrifying time. New wealth and new commodities were springing up constantly, but they tended to be concentrated in the hands of very few, while created at the expense of millions of common, downtrodden labourers. Those who attack government regulation of corporations should study the Gilded Age of America, and the Industrial Revolution in England. Child labourer, no safety laws whatsoever, no minimum wage, no work-week, no fair bargaining between workers and employees, government subsidizing of wealthy corporations, union-busters, etc. Is there any wonder Marx and Engels, who were essentially exiled to England during this time, were filled with such anger at the system that caused so much human suffering?

Marx's critique of capitalism is in my estimate the strongest part of his theory, and it is likely that his witnessing the above exploitations of workers is why it is so strong, and why the Manifesto seems so... angry. I strongly recommend that anyone interested in Marxist theory pick up a copy of the Marx-Engels Reader (also available on Amazon) and read through the "Critique of Capitalism" section, which offers selections from his writings under this topic.

How right Marx was is for the reader to decide. Again, I find his critique of capitalism VERY accurate, and believe the only reason his predictions haven't come to fruition to be because we implemented some of his recommended policies (we now live in a blended economy, somewhere on the spectrum between pure capitalism and communism). Communism itself is a bit silly, but not so much as the anti-Marxists make it out to be. The real take-away point here is that you should study (not read, STUDY) Marx for yourself, and not accept what I, or the anti-Marxists, tell you.

With this review I hope to cover some areas others have not. I would have the reader to read more than just my review of this product.

Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto, A Norton critical edition
Edited by Frederic L Bender.

The Communist Manifesto is by all means one of the most (if not the most) controversial documents of non-religious origin. This Norton Critical Edition does this work justice in many ways: It gives a bullet point historical outline of events leading up to the manifesto, provides a brief history leading up to the writing of the manifesto (a must read in my opinion), provides the manifesto itself, and then gives the reader commentary from various writers concerning the manifesto's historical impact and interpretation. All this in just over 200 pages. Those looking only for a brief description of the product need read no further.


The rest of this review is my impression of the manifesto and the historical context in this volume. Events leading up to the writing of "The Communist Manifesto" saw many Europeans in poverty. Marx himself lost three of his own children; to quote a note in Oxford's version of Marx's "Capital" stated, "Poverty was partly responsible for the death of three of his six children." At any rate Pauperism was the norm in European society, and Marx attempts to paint a grotesque picture for the reader: The Bourgeois (capitalists, the have's, the rich) vs. the Proletarians (impoverished). Background of the text sees the artisans (middle class) vanishing (loss of the middle class) , and an increase in number of the Proletarians. This helps the reader grasp a clear visual of European society prior to the writing of the manifesto (it is interesting to note that Germany was in ruins prior to the rise of Hitler). Let us now look at Marx himself.

What I found most interesting about Marx's writing is that he really saw no other alternative but to call for removal of all Bourgeois power, and abolition of owning property. To quote Marx, "The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only be the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!" Marx also openly criticized what he considered other forms of socialism that did not call for "forcible overthrow" and referred to one of them as "Utopian."

Marx states further, "There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc.; that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience." This is one of the most shocking comments (to me personally) made by Marx in his manifesto. There are individuals that don't understand that under Marxist communism freedom of religion doesn't exist. There is a side note from another writing of Marx (supplied cleverly by Frederic L Bender the editor of this version ) where Marx is very critical of Christianity. To quote Marx,

"The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self -contempt, abasement, submissiveness and humbleness, in short all the qualities of the rabble, and the proletariat, which will not permit itself to be treated as rabble, needs its courage, its self-confidence, its pride and its sense of independence even more than its bread. The social principles of Christianity are sneaking and hypocritical, and the proletariat is revolutionary." (Marx, The Communism of the Rheinische Beobachter, Marx, Engels Collected works).

It is at this moment that I would like to divert momentarily into the difference between Christian thought and Marx. Marx writings are indignant toward Christianity in general, and call on the state to assume control over all aspects of life: religion, property, and all business. The Christianity of the Bible was never a political system. Peter told Ananias in Acts 5:3-4 that the property that Ananias sold was his own, and that "after it was sold was it not in thine own power?" Ananias could have chosen to not sell the property, or to keep a portion of the money for himself without lying about it. The record itself shows a spiritual decision that took Ananias outside God's protection. However, the important context is that the decision belonged to Ananias. No one forced him to sell his property. After all Peter stated, "Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? And after it was sold , was it not in thine own power?" Christian doctrine did NOT involve the FORCED take over of property, nor did it impose a belief system on those who chose not to commit to Christian doctrine. Now what men have done in the name of God over the centuries is a much different story, and would not be prudent to indulge in at this time.
In closing, I would like to point out that Marx was a free trade advocate. The editor of this text points this out on numerous occasions that sited other works of Marx. Marx himself saw free trade as a vehicle to unite socialism. The reader needs to be aware that Marx vision was to see the rise of Capitalism as a necessity means to the bourgeois coming to power and a proletariat revolt. Unfortunately after deep consideration I can see these forces at work in the U.S.A.!!! The almost certain death of the middle class and the rise of huge corporations. Politicians who succumb to help the few at the expense of many. We are in fact becoming more of a have and have not society ourselves. The one great principle we as Americans have is the ability to start our own business. Small business is still the key to wealth in this country. Employers will never give an individual financial freedom. It is only the right we still hold by a thread to start our own business and make our own wealth that really keeps capitalism alive and thriving. Without it, you are left with a have and have not society, and with it will come the rise of another Marx. I pray that our country turns from this form of soft socialism that has been imposed upon us, and that we never have to witness those horrid words spring forth from another's pen, " WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!"
That is the biggest lesson I took away from this.

the book is pretty new, the content is a little bit hard to understand. but the cases is helpful

The book covers different subjects in Strategic Management with careful attention and vivid descriptions.The clarity in understanding and implementaion theroff for each chapter are well put forwrad with adequate case studies.Step by step understanding of the subject has been emphasized which makes it very useful for students.Chapters on Strategy Implementaion for differnt stages of Industry Life cycle have been emphasized which helps in understanding different options that are availble for the enterprise. This book will be very handy for Management Students with ready reference to differnt aspects of decision making process in Strategic Management.

I think that this book as a whole is a good book, except for the fact that the graphics were done only in orange. At a business stand point I thought it gave a good representation of the material. I thought that the material covered was covered well. Although there was times when I didn't understand what the authors were trying to say because the layout was difficult to understand. Another critizium that I have is that there was no pictures. I now that this is an upper level material but some people also learn by visualization like me and to see a representation of the material would be helpful.

Hill and Jones have written an excellent book on strategic management. The key element, the importance of exploiting Distinctive Competencies based on Efficiency ,Quality, Innovation, and Customer Satisfaction in order to achieve Competetive Advantage, is demonstrated througout his book in his concise and to the point cases, which are all recent experiences of well known players. Its final case study is a practical and powerful way to ensure that his concepts are understood

This book was written to take up the time of the everyday student. Because of poor grammar and lack of logical ways of wording sentences, it takes twice the time to understand what the author is trying to say. The cases, however, were helpful in understanding the material presented in the chapters.

This was the required text for a class, as we had a very lazy instructor who relied 100% on the book to teach her class - including the quiz questions. The book is very wordy, contains many poor examples, and contains language that is downright wrong and confusing at times. I wrote the authors about some of the questions/concerns I had and recieved the most poorly written reply from the author - a PhD and professor at Texas A&M. He would have had trouble passing High School English from the email he sent.

The quiz questions within the book were very poorly written. The class, as a whole, used reason and argument to overturn over 10% of the books answers within the class.

Below is the reply from Professor Gareth Jones
-----------------------------------------------
hello kevin

writing a textbook and keeping its lenght within limits is always a major problem for authors. ther short answer to your quesiton is that the "invalidated theories are discussed because many instructors want them, and many people out there still think they are valid. by the end of each chapter you see how far research has come and how complex thew topic really is. our goal is to help people understand the compleixty of the issues involved and that management is not a cut and dried issue but one intimately tied up with the appraoch and beliefs of each manager

our text is rarely regarded as being wordy, quite the opposite as people find our examples and boxes interesting, i dontg know what your own background is possibly computers/engineering? its always hard crossing disciplines, and the issues you raise with motivation are addressed in adsvanced classes inside management departments for majors and for MBAs

the test bank is another issue, and i have forwarded your comments to the publisheds who are responsible for that

possibly by the end of the book, and having digested what is a lot of material, you can think back to whaty you knew before the course and wehat you know now and you find that we will have added value to your understand, that is our goal anyway and one thats is succeeding as our book is one of the most widely used across the U.S.

good luck, gareth

This book was an excellent book on the principles of management. The student CD was a great help in reviewing each chapter prior to class. The quizzes also helped in understanding the objectives. Would reccommend this book to anyone taking a business course.

This was a great course book for use with my business class Itook last term. I had current up to date examples and was veryreadable.

I am disappointed, because the writers are the top of Microsofts engine driving domain specific languages.
The book tells what is possible using Visual Studio 2005 and the DSL tools. However it does a terrible job in explaining how and when to use the tools.
It is not a handsone book, you can't take it and work through examples and it is not an reading/theoratical book either, you can't read it while one the train to work and hope to learn anything.
Just like the book on software factories this book is elaborate and the writers are smart they are just not capable of making the information simple and interesting enough to stick into my head.

There's no doubt that Microsoft has a steller team working on its DSL tools, and given their position on the DSL team, there's no better team of writers to elaborate both the underlying concepts as well as go in depth on the implementations of those technologies in the Visual Studio DSL Tools.

The more developers and architects getting familiar with DSLs and modeling, the better, and this toolset and book are the best resource I know of for learning more about the domain and getting a very useful and concrete example of the concepts as well as a tool you can use to start building your own.

Buy it. Learn it. Use it.

The books covers almost all of the capabilities for the DSL world, however in this approach to cover all themes, they present some important subjects in a very light way. The reader must have a previous and seriuos knowledge of DSL items and a lot of experience in Visual Studio 2005.
However some chapters (2,3,4,8 and 9) are very very good :D

Needed for a course. Received in excellent condition and the price can't be beat...just take a look at the University Book Store and compare. Thanks for reselling your books. Grateful. MysticBleu

The book was already sold after I bought it. Please take it off web site after it's sold. But I was reimbursed properly.

Gareth Stedman Jones's Languages of Class is a collection of essays, which as the subtitle makes clear, studies the English working class at various moments from 1832 to 1982. The unifying theme of these essays is a concern with the big "C" issues of history: Class, Culture, Control, Consciousness and Custom. Fittingly the centerpiece of the book retains this alliterative and theoretical concordance through its consideration of Chartism. The essays display the evolution of Stedman Jones's concern with the deployment of concepts of class. In his introduction to the collection Stedman Jones states his mature, 1982, view "that the term class is a word embedded in language and should thus be analysed in its linguistic context." Further he states that "because there are different languages of class" the historian must not assume that every articulation of "class" shares "a single reference point in an anterior social reality." These points find there clearest expression in his treatment of Chartism. (pp. 7-8)

Stedman Jones argues that Chartism needs to be rethought because "nearly all the writings on Chartism, except that of the Chartists themselves," concentrate on the movements' class character, or the hunger and distress "of which it was thought to be the manifestation," rather than on what the Chartists said or wrote. Against this practice Stedman Jones wishes to analyze the ideology of Chartism through what he calls its "linguistic form." He argues that this form was not an expression of class consciousness on behalf of the working class as the form pre-existed independent action by that class. Nor was the form a mere expression of discontent, rather it "informed the political activity of the movement, ... defined the terms in which oppression was understood, and it was what provided the vision of an alternative." Further the linguistic form "defined the political crisis from which Chartism emerged" and fashioned the means of the crisis's resolution. (p. 93, p. 94, & pp. 95-96)

Stedman Jones's argument, in essence, is that Chartist consciousness was shaped by an inherited language of radicalism that saw economic power as derived from political power rather than the other way round. This argument is significant because it rejects a notion of Chartism as the beginning of working class consciousness and makes it part of a customary radical response to corruption. It is at this point that his argument begins to falter.

Stedman Jones notes that E.P. Thompson, in The Making of the English Working Class, "freed the concept of class consciousness from any simple reduction to the development of productive forces," but adds that it is necessary to go further. Stedman Jones wishes to explore the space of ideological context where the coherence of a language of class is established. But this is what he fails to do. He marshals an impressive amount of evidence as to the "radical" nature of the language employed by the Chartists but he never explores the way that this language attained or retained its meaning during the Chartist era. Instead its meaning is established by reference to custom: "From the days of the London Corresponding Society ... the dominant language of radicals had been a form of constitutionalist rhetoric, which had used precedent to justify images of an organic community and elaborated a mythical history ... to reclaim rights which historically belonged to the English people." (p. 101 & p. 125)

This shying away from the implications of analyzing movements for change through the language they employ leads to a slippage in Stedman Jones's essay. At one stage the reader is told that in the early years of the nineteenth-century "the case for universal suffrage was not generally argued on an abstract plane as a universal right inhering in every citizen." Later Stedman Jones says, that "even in this last phase of Chartism [1850] ... a language of natural right still predominated." In the first instance Stedman Jones described how the language of rights was interpreted with regards to property, that is, according to the Chartists, the only legitimate source of property was labor and this gave the working classes a claim to rights. In the second instance he was trying to display the militant conviction that the concept of natural rights could engender, but also the limits imposed by the "individualist presuppositions" of such language. It is in the space between these two formulations that Stedman Jones's project falls flat. At one end he can talk of the working classes claiming rights through a concept of property while at the other end he speaks of the limits of their language. Between these two instances he displays a selection of Chartist writings that employ the same language but he never analyzes their content. Instead the reader is left with a set of instances that confirm Stedman Jones's basic assumptions about the continued use of the language of "radicalism." Language assumes an ahistorical function through his presentation and ends up being "limited." Language emerges as Marx's dead weight of tradition, although in Stedman Jones's presentation it is not quite dead and has some positive function. But the relationship between dead weight and positive function remains vague and the reader is left to make the appropriate connections. (p. 108 & p. 156)

Stedman Jones shows how political consciousness relies upon language but he does not adequately show how political consciousness can shape the language it employs to meet a specific occasion. He concludes his essay on Chartism by pointing to the changing character and policies of the state as the principle cause of the rise and fall of Chartism. But his essay suggests that it was the inability of Chartists to shape the language they employed that led to their decline.

I chose to read this book for a seminar I'm taking on Victorian Britain. I think all serious students of 19th century England should have this book; it is especially valuable as a reference work. Gareth Stedman Jones exhaustive research and meticulous writing are obvious, and the book is chock full of statistics. However, as a student of social history, I was disappointed that Outcast London did not contain much information on the lifestyles of the disenfranchised residents of Victorian London.

excellenct collection of articles of strategic management
writers could update and make 2008-version of this same collection