Reviews Books

After inheriting the showboat the Jubilee Palace, The Barlows, mother Lillian daughter Gwen and brother Preston leave their staid existence in a small town and perform shows along the rivers of America. Their latest stop is Moss Hollow, Kentucky; an insular village that makes the star of the show Marianne Dresden acts very peculiar. Instead of acting like her casual out going self, she hides in her stateroom.

Gwen learns the reason the star is acting despondent and reclusive is because she came from this town and her real name is Mary Alice Kobb who left home in disgrace. Her father, a stern emotionally abusive man wants her to come home which she refuses to do and after the performances his body is found dead. The sheriff refuses to let the Jubilee leave until the murderer is caught and when another killing occurs, Gwen decides to snoop never realizing that she will be caught in a killer's trap.

Readers who like exciting amateur sleuth novels set in an American historical setting near the turn of the twentieth century will find the Jubilee showboat mysteries a pure delight. Cynthia Thomason creates characters that are easy to like and places then in situations that range from the comical to dangerous sometimes in the same scene. She creates a picture of a bygone era, one this reviewer finds enchanting.

Harriet Klausner

The Jubilee Palace showboat has stopped for a performance in Moss Hollow, Kentucky. It is soon discovered that Moss Hollow is the birthplace of the troupe's lead actress, Marianne Dresden.

Apparently Marianne Dresden was born Mary Alice Kobb and left her parents' cabin and a big secret and ran away from the river town. The town appears to be run by the Diggers family. Everywhere Gwen Barlow turns, there is another member of the Diggers family.

Gwen's mother inherited the Jubilee Palace and now lives on it with her daughter Gwen and her son Preston.

After the performance, Mary Alice's father is found murdered on the showboat, grounding it in Moss Hollow until the investigation is completed. Gwen had so hoped they could leave right after the performance to avoid problems with the Kobb family.

In an attempt to free the Jubilee so it can move on, Gwen begins to investigate the murder to try to assist the sheriff. She soon finds that many people had reasons to see Mr. Kobb eliminated. In her attempts to find the truth, she has to deal with small-town prejudice and a country preacher who takes a fancy to Gwen. Then there's the crude moonshiner who once dated Mary Alice. Mary Alice wants nothing to do with anyone in Moss Hollow.

Gwen is happy to have the handsome showboat captain, Carson Stockwell, assisting her in the investigation and protecting her when needed.

Before the Jubilee is finally freed to go, a miracle arrives for Gwen. Can Gwen solve the murder without putting herself in harm and losing a chance at the miracle?

I love this series set on an old showboat. The characters are so enjoyable. So many different personalities and yet it is easy to keep them straight as you read. The author has done a great job of creating them and making them come to life. I feel as if I've been aboard the showboat when I'm reading.

Gwen is a fun, but determined young woman. She has to be to be able to run the Jubilee. But there are some twists in this book that make her relook at her life.

I highly recommend this book and can't wait to read the next one.

In The Great Wounded Bird And Other Poems, David Westheimer (winner of the 2000 Texas Review Poetry Prize) presents a memorable, strongly recommended collection of poems about the experiences of men in a time and place of war. Poggio Mirteto: RAF bomber crewman are in the room next to ours/At Poggio Mirteto, the Italian quarantine prison./When we try to talk to them through the wall,/They do not trust us./We might not be what we claim./But when the sing, "That was a cute little rhyme,/sing us another one, do," and we do,/We pass their test, genuine Yanks. We sing/"Sixpence" through the wall./"I've got sixpence to last me all my life."/Our American version innocent,/The British version dirty,/So we adopt theirs.

This review first appeared in DR AHEAD, the newsletter of the Air Force Navigators Observers Association (AFNOA).

AFNOA Member Westheimer (Turner 42-04)is one of the most successful writers of America's World War II generation, most famous for VON RYAN'S EXPRESS. However, for purposes of this review, two other books by him are notable: SITTING IT OUT, his 1992 memoir about being a prisoner of war in Italy and Germany, and SONG OF THE YOUNG SENTRY, a 1968 fictionalized verson of the same experiences.

In this volume of 56 short, crisp poems written in free verse (Westheimer says that it is really prose set up to look like poetry), the author revisits his memoir. The result is a wonderfully moving reading experience. For example, here is part of the poem called "Lucky":

"Sometimes I think how lucky I was To be captured instead of killed. Out of harm's way, mostly, For two years."

Or the first lines of the first poem, "Old Man," which says why this retelling of long past events in important:

"Men are dying old That I knew young. Their tales all told, Their songs all sung." Yes, the "greatest generation" is dying, but their tales still need to be told, and Westheimer does it with power. This is a poetic history of the crew of a B-24 who go to war in 1942 via the southern route, their navigator guiding them from Florida to Natal across the Atlantic and Africa to Khartoum and Palestine. Described in "The Southern Route":

"Every hour I shoot a three-star fix - Antares, Vega, Altair, Peacock, Fomalhaut, Deneb, Alpheratz"

From Palestine, they fly combat missions against targets in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and finally, for them, Italy where, still in 1942, they are blasted out of the sky.

Most of the story is about life in prison camps and the people on both sides of the wire, first in Italy and then, after Italy switched sides, Germany. Before that we get a taste of what it was like for young Americans on leave in such places as Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo. Liberation is a special experience and then there are hints of a long lifetime of memories.

THE GREAT WOUNDED BIRD is one evening of readind, but I have gone back into it several times. It also led me into reading Westheimer's three books which are memtioned above. All provide useful and somewhat unusual insights into the expereince of being a prisoner of war. It's educational, but, just as important, good, fun reading.

MLR Smith did an extrodinary job of portaying the military history of the IRA. He explicates the Anglo-Irish Treatry and implores the pragmatic achievments of Michael Collins. From the Civil War and hencforth, Smith examines the lapse of political ends in the IRA or the irregulars. He compares the fallacies in the bombing campaigns throughout the fifties to the philiosophies on Von Clausewitz' "On War." Never were there any political motives in the campaigns led by Sean Russel. Furthermore, One cannot expect to be victorius in limited warfare in Northern Ireland where the Protestants make up two-thirds of the population. An excellent military analysis of the IRA. Recommended to all readers.

An interesting, dispassionate analysis of IRA strategy from 1969 onwards. Smith is not concerned with moralizing, and takes no position on the justness of the IRA's campaign. Rather, he looks at the methods and strategy of the IRA and how well they have (or haven't) advanced the IRA's interests. He doesn't seem to consider the IRA's goal of a united and free Ireland as realistic, and continually evaluates the IRA's position in the most pragmatic terms possible. This can be somewhat off-putting for someone wrapped up in the principles of Irish Republicanism, but it is thought provoking and these are probably the kind of arguments that were used to bring the IRA's campaign to an end by pragmatists within it and within its political allies in Sinn Fein. For this reason it is a valuable book for Irish Republican supporters to read.

For people not very familiar with the struggle in the north of Ireland, this book is probably not the best place to start. I would suggest reading a broader and more general history first, such as "The IRA" by Tim Pat Coogan, which is excellent for those with no previous knowledge of the subject (and even for those of us who do have some). Then come back to this book.

for Licensure, Second Edition by Scott M. Giles, Therese C. Giles (Editor)

A study group of four individuals from my PTA school used A Guide to Success to help us prepare for the state board exam. We found both the academic review and sample questions to be extremely relevant to the actual examination. I would recommend the book to any PTA student preparing for this examination.

This is the one film critic with whom I never disagreed. Leslie Halliwell was an exhaustively knowledgeable student of film, and this was his valentine's card to the art form he loved. He handpicked his 100 favorite movies and shared generous detail on the people who made them, what made the films great, and his own first experiences of many of them. It's a treasure trove for anyone looking to explore classic cinema; several film courses wrapped up in one book (and a heck of a lot more fun to read than most of the pretentious modern film theorists).

Of course, this is just too good a book to actually still be available...

Forget the pretentious drivel of the post - deconstructionists. Here is a man who loves films and enjoys telling people about the films he loves best. I cannot believe it is out of print. I was searching for a new copy to replace the one I owned that has fallen apart from reading and re-reading. Halliwell delights in revisiting the classics, but also in highlighting some delightful minor films. I relish Father Brown which I had to go to a midnight showing. I have spent 16 years tracking down all the films in this book and every single one has been a joy. I have six to go and I hope I get to see them all. Halliwell repeated the dose with Halliwell's harvest - an equally enjoyable book. I cannot imagine that anyone who loves films could not enjoy this book. He can be a bit stuffy in his criticism, but this is a quibble for one of the best film books about. Not only does he tell you about the film. He talks about where he saw the film and I loved his story about Gaslight that he saw three times in one day. His mother eventually came to get him out of the theatre only to watch the film herself.

Victoria Kamhi de Rodrigo writes a wonderful memoir of her life, starting with her childhood in Turkey, her meeting of Joaquin Rodrigo, and her marriage to Rodrigo. I think that it is safe to say that Victoria Kamhi de Rodrigo played a crucial role in her husband's later success as a composer. Those who love Rodrigo's music will grow in admiration for Rodrigo and his spouse. For those interested in the history of Spanish music, I reccommend this book highly.

This book is a chronological document of the lives of the major representatives of Spain's classical musicians. It has been wrote by his wife, a virtuose of the piano as well, whom was the "eyes of the maestro" since he became blind at aged three. What is particularly important of this book for me is that it conducts the reader through their fascinating lives and leaves you thirsty in trying to know more about them and the maetro's musical production. It is a sensitive book, that describes with great modesty all the achievements of the maestro before and after the writting of his masterpiece: El concierto de Aranjuez.

Michael Porter is a guru on competition and strategic planning. His article "How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy" is so powerful and incisive that any serious manager wishing to devise strategies to cope with competition in his/her industry needs to read, understand and be fully conversant with the five basic forces which Porter states determines the state of competition in an industry.

According to Porter, competition in an industry is rooted in its underlying economics. There are forces that go beyond the established rivals in a particular industry. The five forces are:

* The bargaining power of customers
* The bargaining power of suppliers
* The threats of new entrants
* The threat of substitute products and services
* Rivalry among the existing competitors.

The collective strengths of the five forces determine the ultimate profit potential of an industry. The task of the corporate strategist is to find a position in the industry where his/her company can best defend itself against the forces or can influence them in his favour. The strongest competitive force or forces determine the profitability of an industry and these are very essential in strategy formulation.

Every industry has an underlying structure that give rise to the five competitive forces. The strategist needs to know what drives the industry if he/she is to position the firm to effectively cope with the environment or influence the environment.

After assessing the forces affecting competition in an industry and their underlying causes, the strategic planner can identify the company's strengths and weaknesses. Strategy can be viewed as building defences against the competitive forces or finding positions in the industry where the forces are weakest.

This is an excellent article which is well presented. It is recommended reading for managers as it will certainly assist them in analysing competitive forces in their industry. I also recommend the article to students studying management, business studies or doing and MBA.

Michael E. Porter is a Harvard Business School professor and a leading authority on competition. He has written several important novels and articles in the field of competition and strategic management. This article, published in the March-April 1979 issue of Harvard Business Review, meant the start of a great string of articles by Michael E. Porter. More importantly, it was the start of the positioning school in the field of strategic management.

"The essence of strategy formulation is coping with competition. ... intense competition in an industry is neother coincidence nor bad luck." The state of competition in an industry depends on five basic forces: (1) jockeying among current competitors, (2) threat of new entrants, (3) bargaining power of suppliers, (4), bargaining power of customers, and (5) threat of substitute products or services. The author describes each force in detail and its consequence on competition. The collective strength of these forces determines the ultimate profit potential of an industry, and it is the goal to find a position in the industry where the company can best defend itself against these forces or can influence them in its favor. The company needs to identify its strengths and weaknesses, and compare these against the underlying causes of each force. Then the company can devise a plan of action that may include (1) positioning the company, and/or (2) influencing the balance of the forces through strategic moves, and/or (3) exploiting industry change before opponents recognize it.

This article was awarded with the McKinsey Award (= best article in Harvard Business Review that year) and no reader will be surprised. It is a truly great article, and I must admit one of my all-time favorites. It will be remembered most for its introduction of the five competitive forces. Some people have criticized Michael Porter's framework(s) for being too static, but he has responded to those critics in his 1996-article 'What is Strategy?'. I would recommend this article to anybody in management and certainly all MBA-students. This is the first article you should read on strategic management! And to be followed up with Michael Porter's 1980-classic 'Competitive Strategy'. The article is written in simple US-English.

This is one in a series of several dozen volumes that comprise the "Harvard Business Review Paperback Series." Each offers direct, convenient, and inexpensive access to the best thinking on the given subject in articles originally published by the Harvard Business School Review. I strongly recommend all of the volumes in the series. The individual titles are listed at this Web site: www.hbsp.harvard.edu. The authors of various articles are among the world's most highly regarded experts on the given subject. Each volume has been carefully edited. Supplementary commentaries are also provided in most of the volumes, as is an "About the Contributors" section that usually includes suggestions of other sources that some readers may wish to explore.

In this volume, the reader is provided with eight articles whose authors provide a variety of perspectives on how to become a high performance manager. Given when they first appeared in the HBR (1982-2002), some but remarkably little of the material is dated. Here are some of the important business issues to which the contributors respond:

How to delegate effectively so that report-to's are personally accountable for fulfilling their obligations? ("Who's Got the Monkey?," William Oncken, Jr. and Donald L. Wass)

How to focus only on what is most important? ("Beware the Busy Manager," Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghosal)

How to decide what to do despite uncertainty and an enormous amount of potentially relevant information? ("What Effective General Managers Really Do," John P. Kotter)

What is the "performance pyramid" and how can this model increase professional performance and improve quality of life? ("The Making of a Corporate Athlete," Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz)

How can executives effectively organize day-to-day activities, improve their performance under pressure, and get subordinates to become more productive? ("Managers Can Avoid Wasting Time," Ronald N. Ashkenas and Robert H. Schaffer)

What are some of "the very real dangers of executive coaching" and how to avoid them? (Steven Berglas)

Note: In another article, "All in a Day's Work," Harris Collinwood and Julia Kirby co-moderate a discussion of various leadership issues by six experts from the corporate world, the non-profit sector, and academia.

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out the recently published Harvard Business Review on Making Smarter Decisions as well as other series title in the Harvard Business Review Paperback Series such as those on Change, Corporate Strategy, Decision Making, Effective Communication, the Innovative Enterprise, Leadership, Leadership at the Top, and Measuring Corporate Performance.

Also Michael George's Authentic Leadership and True North, Jack Welch and Suzy Welch's Winning, Michael Ray's The Highest Goal, Ram Charan's Know-How, and James O'Toole's The Executive's Compass.

This review is supposed to tell the potential reader what to expect from this book, based on the confession that I highly recommend reading this book.

This book is NOT A RECIPE. If you look for a "recipe" as to how to become a high performance manager, I would recommend Stephen Covey's classic on the 7 habits of highly effective people.

This book IS a perfect checklist to compare your behvior as a manager to the recommendations of people who have given the topic "high performance management" much professional thought. The art of excellent delegation and time management is broadly discussed. Multiple warnings are placed concerning the "busy manager" - one of the most dangerous symptoms in management.

If you are one your way as a junior or senior manager, read this excellent checklist - the investment will pay off.

This is one in a series of several dozen volumes that comprise the "Harvard Business Review Paperback Series." Each offers direct, convenient, and inexpensive access to the best thinking on the given subject in articles originally published by the Harvard Business School Review. I strongly recommend all of the volumes in the series. The individual titles are listed at this Web site: www.hbsp.harvard.edu. The authors of various articles are among the world's most highly regarded experts on the given subject. Each volume has been carefully edited. Supplementary commentaries are also provided in most of the volumes, as is an "About the Contributors" section that usually includes suggestions of other sources that some readers may wish to explore.

In this volume, the reader is provided with eight articles whose authors provide a variety of perspectives on how to lead an organization through a process of significant change while minimizing fear, frustration, and resistance. All of the articles first appeared in the HBR over an extended period of time, from March-April, 1992, to October, 2005; some but remarkably little of the material is dated. Here are some of the important business issues to which four contributors direct their (and our) attention:


Which seem to be the most common mistakes made by executives? ("Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail," John P. Kotter)
Comment: Kotter identifies eight and suggests how to avoid or repair them.

How to focus only on what is most important? ("Tipping Point Leadership," W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne)
Comment: The co-authors of Blue Ocean Strategy explain how "tipping points" can result in fundamental changes when a sufficient number of people embrace and support a powerful idea. They examine how a newly appointed police commissioner, in less than two years, turned New York into the safest large city in the nation by following a four-step process to bring about rapid, dramatic, and lasting change with limited resources.

Why is follow-through "the DNA of decisive cultures"? ("Conquering a Culture of Indecision," Ram Charan)
Comment: In all of his various books and articles, Charan stresses the importance of making correct decision and then taking effective action to achieve desired results, whatever they may be. To change a culture of decision, he insists, leaders must ask hard questions such as "How robust and effective are our social operating mechanisms?" GE has forged a system of ten tightly linked operating mechanisms that, Charan suggests, comprise its "secret weapon."

Why are leaders sometimes "on" and other times Not? (""Moments of Greatness: Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership," Robert E. Quinn)
Comment: Quinn identifies four "awareness-raising questions" which leaders must ask and then answer honestly so that they can challenge themselves to have a positive impact on their own lives and on those around them. These questions "often lead to high-performance outcomes, and repetition of high-performance outcomes can eventually create a high-performance culture."

Which factors correlate with the success or failure of change initiatives? ("The Hard Side of Change Management," Harold L. Sirkin, Perry Keenan, and Alan Jackson)
Comment: Based on their research on change initiatives at 225 companies, the co-authors of this article concluded that it is possible to predict the probable results of such initiatives by considering what they characterize as four "DICE factors" within a diagnostic framework. Once the evaluation has been completed, the executives involved can then "shine a spotlight on the interventions that would improve their chances of success."

As I indicated earlier, at least some of the material in this volume is dated. However, the insights shared in these articles as well as in the other remain relevant. Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out the recently published Harvard Business Review on Making Smarter Decisions as well as other series titles in the Harvard Business Review Paperback Series such as those Effective Communication, the Innovative Enterprise, Leadership at the Top, and Measuring Corporate Performance.

Also Michael George's Authentic Leadership and True North, Jack Welch and Suzy Welch's Winning, Michael Ray's The Highest Goal, Ram Charan's Know-How, and Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman's X-Teams, Richard Ogle's Smart World, and James O'Toole's The Executive's Compass.

I picked this book up at an airport to have something to read on my flight, and I was not disappointed in the least. It provides excellent information and insight on leading organizations during times of change.

In Kotter's essay, "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail", he analyzes common errors of leading through change, and converts them into 8 steps for transforming an organization: (1) establishing a sense of urgency, (2) forming a powerful guiding coalition, (3) creating a vision, (4) communicating the vision, (5) empowering others to act on the vision, (6) planning for and creating short-term wins, (7) consolidating improvements and creating still more changes, and (8) institutionalizing new approaches. Kotter shows how these 8 principles can lead to either the downfall or the success of an organization.

I also found Ram Charan's essay, "Conquering a Culture of Indecision", to be extremely helpful. He outlines the steps for creating greater communication, turning that into action, and providing follow-through and feedback.

Also of great interest to me was Eric Abrahamson's "Change Without Pain". He defines the difference between "tinkering" and "kludging" (tinkering with a college education). He also offers helpful operating guidelines that make quite a bit of sense.

Different essays will be more relevant for different individuals, but all in all, this compilation of essays provides excellent insight, and should be required reading for executive teams in the midst of major periods of change.

I read this book when it was first published in 1999 and recently re-read it, curious to see how well it has held up during the past five years. I think it has done so to a remarkable extent, with my only regret being that Theodore Levitt's "Marketing Myopia" is not included among the selections. This is one in a series of several dozen volumes which comprise the "Harvard Business Review Paperback Series." Each offers direct, convenient, and inexpensive access to the best thinking on the given subject in articles originally published by the Harvard Business Review. I strongly recommend all of the volumes in the series. The individual titles are listed at this Web site: www.hbsp.harvard.edu. The authors of various articles are among the world's most highly regarded experts on the given subject. All of the volumes have been carefully edited. An Executive Summary introduces each selection. Supplementary commentaries are also provided in most of the volumes, as is an "About the Contributors" section which usually includes suggestions of other sources which some readers may wish to explore.

In this volume, we are provided with a variety of perspectives on marketing: Keller's on "the brand score card," Jackson's on bringing a dying brand back to life, Rao/Bergen/Davis' on how to fight a price war, Kenny and Marshall's on "contextual marketing" (i.e. "the real business of the Internet"), Aaker and Joachimsthaler's on the "lure" of global branding, Hatch and Schultz' on getting corporate strategy and branding in alignment, Brown's on "tormenting" customers, and Almquist and Wyner's on how to increase the ROI on marketing with experimental design. Quite true, some of the material is dated and inevitably so, given the elapsed time since the articles were published in the Harvard Business Review. However, in my opinion, the principles advocated and the core strategies recommended remain relevant to the contemporary marketplace.

For about the cost of breakfast in an upscale Manhattan restaurant, each volume in this series provides an intellectual feast. It remains for each reader to determine, of course, which of the volumes will be most nutritious to her or his appetite.

There are now over 20 books in this Harvard Business Review series. All the books are compilations of the best articles from the Harvard Business Review magazine. This book is one of the best books in the series for the quality, relevance, and usefulness of the articles selected for inclusion.

The eight articles selected for this book are 'The Brand Report Card', 'Bringing a Dying Brand Back to Life', 'How to Fight a Price War', 'Contextual Marketing: The Real Business of the Internet', 'The Lure of Global Marketing', 'Are the Strategic Stars Aligned for Your Corporate Brand', 'Torment Your Customers (They'll Love It), and 'Boost Your Marketing ROI with Experimental Design'.

My favorite article was the first one 'The Brand Report Card'. This article in just a few pages cuts to the core of how to evaluate the strength of your brand using a very logical approach.

The article on Contextual Marketing about the Internet is very interesting since it was written in late 2000 and makes predictions about how the Internet will change by the end of 2003 to 2005. But even the basic predictions haven't come true regarding how ubiquitous the authors predict the Internet will become. Yes, we have access to the Internet through wireless devices but they are not very profitable for businesses right now. Of course, the current economic conditions are influencing the predictions quite significantly.

Overall, this is indeed an excellent collection of articles relating to Marketing and the book is priced well since it is far more expensive to buy the same collection of articles directly from Harvard Business Review online (almost 5 times more expensive).

I have been reading several books on marketing over the last few years to apply in my small business and this book is one of the best I have read. It is less than 200 pages long and makes for a very quick yet powerful read. Enjoy reading and benefiting from the book!