Z Books

I read this book in one evening for two reasons. First, I didn't want to put it down!! Second, because it touched me so! I laughed out loud, and it also brought me to tears. And third, because it is such an easy read. The author has a conversation with the reader. I felt like I was talking with my best friend.

My daughter (20 years old) was in the room with me as I read, and now she wants to read it too. But, now my Mom (84 years old) is reading it. She loves it too! This book is a great read for all ages and genders. Yes, it's abount running, but MORE so it's about dealing with life's ups and downs--that we all experience.

Great Book! This is a touching and motivating story, with a nice balance of humor and honesty and plenty of situations I could relate to. I would recommend this book for someone facing a challenge in life, daughters who are close to their fathers, or anyone who enjoys a inspirational story.

This book was produced to accompany the special exhibit of samplers at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the spring of 2000 and contains photographs of the samplers in the exhibition. Beginning with a brief history of samplers and with a sampler for every letter of the alphabet, it includes such treasures as a sampler fragment (1300) excavated in Egypt, a band sampler from Britain (mid 1600s), a Dutch darning sampler (1813), American pictorial samplers, exquisite Ayrshire work from Scotland and a splendid embroidered Mexican landscape sampler (see cover of book). For those who were unable to visit the exhibit, it is a wonderful opportunity to enjoy a variety of samplers, from many countries, exquisitely stitched over a period of 500 years.

Wonderful sampler of samplers. Excellent photos, good writeups.

First saw the book back in 1979. Bought the book in (May) 1981 and studied the program. Bought a TRS-80 Model 1 (second hand) in 1982. With the computer was the SARGON program. I played a few games on level 1 and it won. I thought I knew the program, but it still beat me. I took the program apart line by line using the book and started to win. I got up to level 4, of the 6 levels, and I would beat it more time than it beat me. (A game would take 2 or 3 days.) The book is the heart and soul to the program. It IS the program.

My first chess program was Sargon, running on Apple Computer. It was very impressive and beat me easily. My next two Sargon programs (II and III) were for Commodore 64. I guessed even my Fidelity Chess Computer ran on one of these versions of Sargon. I was always curious about the internal working mechanism of these programs. I tried to study the machine codes (6502 and 6510) of Sargon and Sargon III, but gave up about 10% into the process. I found this book from my school library, but at that time my programming experience was weak and had no tools to test the program in the book. Later, on the job, I found some discarded Z80 motherboards, and I was back to study this Sargon program. It is a very good way to understand how the internal program works. Now I have studied two more programs GNU Chess 5.00 and Phalanx, Sargon was still a "good-date" to remember. Sargon was written for micro-machine when memory was at the premium; therefore the code was in machine code. It took lots of efforts to go through it but it is worth it. With high-speed CPUs and plenty of memory newer computers provided, most programs are now in C or higher-level languages. These higher-level languages help a lot to speed through the programs. I have a copy of Sargon book. It is one of the historical documents of chess playing programs in particular and of artificial intelligence in general.
One more point, Sargon was the first program written for microcomputer to compete with other more dedicated and/or specialized chess engines, and Sargon had won some honorable prizes. If you can afford one for your chess program library, keep one.

Beautiful color photographs and carefully selected quotes taken from Ruchira Avatar Adi Da's Teachings adorn this inspirational book. It records in detail, the remarkable work that spans the first 25 years of this Great Master's Teaching Life. Truly a labor of Love!

This coffee-table quality book is a must buy for anyone interested in understanding how the Divine World Teacher, Adi Da Samraj has worked intimately with his devotees during the past 25 years. This book is full of beautiful photographs, stories,and quotes from Adi Da Samraj. I highly recommend it for anyone truly interested in estatic living and divine communion.

In Shoestring Investing Made E-Z, John Santosuosso careful and clearly instructs the reader on how to amass the security of cash investments in bull and bear markets, invest in foreign markets, exploit reinvestment plans, and the various options available to financially prepare for retirement. Enhanced with a glossary of important terms and a resource guide, Shoestring Investing Made E-Z is practical, sensible, and offers easy-to-understand "how to" information. Highly recommended reading for the novice investor and family money manager.

This book is a practical compilation of tips and ideas for small time investors. Its style is friendly and straightforward, and written for everyone out there who ever thought that investements were merely something "other people do." The book is forthright - it does not promise miracles. Instead it teaches us what our money does when we put it to work. It realistically measures the pros and cons of various investment techniques and alerts the reader as to possible scams and pitfalls one might encounter. The author recongnizes that most readers do not have a lot of extra money for risky investments and offers readers suggestions as to how they can invest without jeopardizing their financial security. Finally, what really sets this book apart from others is that it convincingly supports the idea anyone with the inclination to study the basics can be a small time investor. The author encourages us to stop waiting until "tomorrow" and offers suggestions as how to get started with as little as $25. Sure, that might not make you a millionaire, but we all have to start some where and this is a pleasent and informative book with which one can get started.

It's eighty-seven degrees, just after noon and Danny and his father are sharing a cigarette in the heat on their way to the track.

This is the way of Michael DeCapite. How he moves through the telling of what he sees. Life as it is, with no embellishment. Slow mostly. Mostly time passing...

DeCapite is to writing what baseball is to sports-deceptively simple, slow, quiet, an expanse of green spread out under sun or lights, a few players...waiting...most of them. Men returning to the field daily, doing it again, waiting it out. A field so perfectly laid out that the deeper into you get, the more you realize the perfection of the game-from the precise incline of the pitcher's mound, adjusted over the years to most evenly match pitcher and batter-to the distance to dead center-it all matters...quietly...it's all headed somewhere. And there is so much going on in any given moment that you can scarcely take it in. This is DeCapite on the page.

Sitting Pretty is a quiet story. Seven men spending an afternoon together, old friends, one of them dying, his grown son too `slow,' too `troubled' to realize. "Those doctors know what they're doing. They're scientists. My dad was sick but he went to see the doctor. They can do anything. The doctor gave him some pills, he's better now. Aren't you, Dad? Hey Dad, you're my sunshine, right?"

Gambling, drinking, cancer, oppressive heat, loss, the horses barreling down the stretch for home...all this hanging from the afternoon sky, while downstage, seven lives move tenderly through another couple of hours. So quietly you might miss it if you didn't know where to look. A father's hand on the back of his son's neck. The whole world is in it.

DeCapite traffics gracefully in the realm of the overlooked - here in Sitting Pretty and in his novel Through the Windshield. I hope America doesn't overlook Michael DeCapite.

I had to read it twice, and will probably read it several times more to get all the little nuances that Decapite has filled this story with. My favorite line on first reading..."It's so bright my soul squints..." The story is very male socially and very human relationally. It offers an insight into something that most of us take for granted, a father's love. Decapite's writing captures the essence of the human relationships in a microcosm that is so full, it is like glimpsing the angels on the head of a pin.

I am in my thirties and I remember reading this when I was about 8 and I can't express how real it made the Lord for me. After all these years I still remember the special times I had pouring over the beautiful illustrations and stories from this Bible.

This is one of the most wonderful Bibles a child could have. Beautiful pictures with short Bible stories just right for children.

I'm using this textbook and study guide for an online course from UC-Berkeley, so I don't have the advantage of physically present professors or students who I can ask questions. However, they are entirely unnecessary for this book.

Gelles is nationally reknowned for his work in sociology, and he conveys his love for it in this textbook. He and his co-authors write with skill and portray their inside-and-out familiarity with the subject. They also pass on some of their love for it. Sociology is the subject I look forward to studying each morning.

The pictures and excellent examples also make this book easy and fun to read and study. It's straightforward and written so clearly that an 8th Grader would have no trouble using the book either. Each point the authors make is backed up with fascinating historical scenarios or illustrations from sociological research.

I highly recommend this book!

I was spoiled to have Dr. Gelles be my professor while I was using the textbook for my intro course at Penn. The textbook itself draws in many interesting sociological concepts using examples from real research and historical data. I don't see why someone who wants to learn about sociology, history, and a lot of other things wouldn't just read this book. The book is well organized and designed to culminate knowledge from previous chapters to develop the sociological imagination.

When I read the first edition of The Solutions Focus, I compared it to Getting To Yes, a classic that changes the way you see the world and act in it. Well, I can now say that SF has more than survived the test of time. It has become part of "the way I do things" both as a consultant and in my personal life.

So I was curious to see what a second edition would bring.

And the answer: It brought some fantastic "Aha" moments, such as the story of James, a manager who feels his second-in-command is out to get him. Using the OSKAR coaching model, James successfully resolves their differences. WOW, of course, what a brilliant and fresh approach to conflict management! The O in OSKAR stands for Outcome, starting with the desired result and moving toward it...

As a corporate negotiation consultant and trainer with more than a penchant for creativity, let me say bravo and thanks..

The Solutions Focus: Making Coaching and Change SIMPLE (Second Edition) by Paul Z Jackson and Mark McKergow (Nicholas Brealey International, 2007) ISBN 1-904838-06-5

When the first edition of The Solutions Focus came out in 2002 it marked a genuine step forward in thinking about organisational change. It brought the insights of Solution Focused Therapy (developed in the late seventies by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg) into the workplace. The second edition, published in 2007, broadens its usefulness to coaches with the addition of new chapters outlining Jackson and McKergow's OSKAR coaching model, manager as coach, team coaching and solution-focused approaches to management consulting.

The beauty of the solution-focused approach is twofold; firstly, like the compatible Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach, it focuses on what is working and what is desired rather than on problems and trying to solve them, so it tends to have a heartening and morale-raising effect on individuals, teams and organisations that experience it.

Secondly, and rather unlike AI (or my own background discipline of NLP for that matter), it emphasises the need for simplicity and is refreshingly free from academic or humanistic psychology jargon and what many people in organisations, desparate for practical ways of dealing with ever-increasing demands, may view as "tree-hugging hippy crap" (as one participant at a recent AI event I helped facilitate put it recently).

The book's writing style does justice to its subject. I knew from taking an accelerated learning course with them about 10 years ago that Jackson and McKergow would present the material in an intelligent and brain-friendly way (the "reformed physicist" McKergow in particular is possessed of the proverbial "brain the size of a planet", while Jackson's background in improvisational comedy adds immediacy and lightness of touch) - and so it proves, with each chapter divided into short, easily digestible sub-headings, and plenty of illustrations and practical examples.

The book gives us six principles of what they refer to as `The Solutions Focus', organised under the acronym SIMPLE:

Solutions not problems
Inbetween - the action is in the interaction (between people)
Make use of what's there (the parts of the solution that are already happening in the current situation)
Possibilities - the resources and possibilities that will take us towards the solution
Every case is different

Something like the "Inbetween" principle (the idea that some aspects of the solution exist in the interaction between people or as emergent qualities of the system, rather than being owned by any one individual) must have been present in solution-focused therapy as it applied to families. It was a new one on this reader though, as I had previously only used solution-focus in therapy and coaching with individuals. By emphasising the principle here, Jackson and McKergow build a very useful bridge between using solution focus with individuals and applying it to teams and organisations.

We are also given a clear description of the various tools of the Solutions Focus approach. The present situation, the starting point for change, is described as the `Platform' (with its connotations of somewhere to depart or lift off from). The desired outcome - what it would be like if the problem disappeared completely - is the `Future Perfect'. Resources, things that are already working, and times when parts of the solution are happening already are called `Counters'. This metaphor didn't work quite as well for me. I suppose in some kind of board game analogy. The other tools are Affirming whatever is helping, taking Small Actions (which can make a big difference, and in any case add up), and the extremely useful Scaling (of progress towards a solution, confidence in a chosen option working, or commitment to a course of action) on a scale of 0 to 10.

The part of the book from which I got the most value is the new material added for the second edition. The authors give many practical examples of how to use the Solutions Focus approach in coaching individuals, team coaching, and organisational consultancy. There is also a useful chapter on coaching as a manager.

One of the most helpful insights (no news to experienced managment consultants, I'm sure, but very helpful to someone like me with a background in individual coaching who is increasingly moving into organisational changework) is about the need to find a `customer for change'. This is someone in an organisation who is aware that it is time for a change, and prepared to do something about it. If the consultant can't find one, their change interventions are unlikely to get very far.

Also new to the second edition is the OSKAR coaching model. The acronym stands for Outcome, Scaling, Know-How, Affirm and action, and Review. In some ways this seems to have been bolted on to the rest of the book; looked at from one angle, it seems merely a relabelling of some of the tools described earlier. `Know-How', for example, seems to be much the same as the resources and abilities described as `Counters' earlier in the book.

My other quibble with the model is that it is more a description of tools than a process model; although the authors say it can be used as a process ,the Scaling, Know-How, and the `Affirm' part of `Affirm and action' might be used both when eliciting what is working in the current situation (the `Platform'), and when deciding what to do to get closer to the `Future Perfect'. Also, the authors say that the `Outcome' stage would include both establishing the Platform and envisioning the `Future Perfect', while the sample questions they give are exclusively about the future, which might lead the careless reader to skimp on exploring the current situation. These are however minor caveats, which I hope a third edition will eventually resolve.

The book finishes up with a short history tracing the evolution and intellectual roots of the Solutions Focus model, placing it in a lineage which includes Bateson's work on paradox and levels of abstraction, Erickson's concept of utilisation, and complexity theory.

All in all, The Solutions Focus is an eye-opening book for anyone looking for greater simplicity and effectiveness in coaching, team-building, or organisational change.

Prof Wang ' Specal fuctions is a classic on specai functions,
In fact Prof, Wang was also an admirer of Modern Analysis.
The style of writting this book is in fact follows the style
of Modern Analysis, That is why is so good. But of course
Prof Wang had his own scheme and add topics not included
in Modern Analysis. To me, the best part is on the elliptic integrals and elliptic functions. I cannot find another book
on this subject which is started with basic theories, then
step by step, to introduce you to more advanced theories
from more simple theories.
Moreover, this book is originally written in Chinese.
Now it is tranalated in English.
This quality of this book is camparable to other famous books
on special functions like George Adrewo's or J. W. L. Olver's.
As a Chinese, I am proud of that and also give my repsect to
Prof Wang, whose contribution to Scientic developmeant in
China cannot over overestimated!

This is an outstanding book on special functions though it doesn't seem well known in the West. At first sight it appears to follow the path of Whittaker and Watson, but on closer examination it actually treats the subject(s) quite differently, sometimes better, dare I say. Among its strengths are (a) all derivations are carried out in detail; (b) the author takes great care to motivate various techniques so that they seem perfectly natural; (c) the contour-integral method is used extensively to solve the differential equations associated with the special functions; and (d) the infinite-series approach to solving the differential equations, which Whittaker and Watson develops theoretically but does not apply, is carried out more thoroughly here than anywhere else.

Point (b) should greatly appeal to the physics type, and it came somewhat as a surprise to me, since I had the impression that most Chinese professors had a very condensed writing style, in which motivation isn't the top priority. On the other hand, the contour-integral-solution approach to ODEs is basically absent (at least not systematically employed) in Whittaker and Watson. When you look at the integral representations of the special functions in the book, there is less of the feeling that they just dropped out of the sky. Point (d) should appeal tremendously to most of the readers, since a typical physics/mathematics student learns the series technique in his/her second course on ODE. The coverage here is outstanding because the author does not summarily dispatch, as most others do, treatment of the irregular solutions, ie, the "bad-boy" solutions which arise when the difference of the roots of the indicial equation equals zero or an integer. Whittaker and Watson, for example, relegates the subject to a footnote in their treatment of the hypergeometric function.

The original author (Wang) wrote the book in Chinese, which was translated into English by two of his students. You can easily tell even without seeing the author list that two translators were involved. One has a better command of English and his prose is more fluid.

Of course, for a subject as classical as special functions, there is bound to be a great deal of overlap between any two books in terms of the topics covered. Without a doubt Whittaker and Watson is still King in this area, but at least for me this book is Queen. Highly recommended.