Competitions Books

i think these was the best in mma conditioning exercises not only functional but also effective. mark hatmaker books are always the best. im looking forward for a 1 complete NHB manual. all books must be completed and must be complied as one inexpensive manual

"No Holds Barred Fighting: The Ultimate Guide to Conditioning" is one of the best combat-sports primers I've seen. The author presents a variety of excercises, including bodyweight, barbell, dumbell, plyo/agility, and stretching. Hatmaker gives the reader suggestions for sample workouts which vary from begginer, intermediate, advanced, and pro. He covers sports-specific conditioning for grip and neck training, and for sprawling and standing up. Also included is a bodyweight cardio workout, great for those of us who find running tedious. Other topics covered include breath control, when to stretch, and the type of cardio specific to the MMA fight game. As another reviewer stated, the weak points of the text include periodization, which isn't even addressed; nutrition, for which Hatmaker hedges his bets by stating that past champs have eaten a variety of foods and that there's no "magic diet"; and weight cutting, for which he suggests simply fighting close to one's own natural weight. For pure conditioning though, the information contained in this book is worth all my other conditioning books put together. With a straight-forward, easy-to-read style and a variety of useful conditioning information, this book is a plus in any martial artist or fighters library.

I have several of Hatmaker's books. I like the reasonable prices, and no nonsense, conversational style and this one is no exception. If you already have significant knowledge of conditioning, I don't think you are going to learn a lot from this book. Some discussion of periodization would be useful. There is virtually nothing on nutrition. (The author points out that many great athletes have had bizarre nutrition plans and suggest you should do what works for you.)

If you want a clear, inexpensive, easy to ready intro that will give you explanations of a number of exercises and specific suggestions for how to assemble them into a program, you will be very pleased with this book. The book has application beyond NHB and MMA, but if you are looking for something for a particular sport that is not one of those or similar (wrestling, bjj, etc.) then you can probably get a resource that is more specific to your needs.

i liked this book but some bits were hard to understand.

Make sure your maths is good and you already know abit about oligopoly pricing. It is thorough, detailed, and pushes the boundaries, but takes some concentration to follow.

Post graduate level I believe.

This book is quite impressive in theoretical concept. This is appropriate for (really) very advanced undergrates, graduates with IO major (theoretical and analytical aspects) and researchers in IO. This book is absolutely not for introductory IO. The topics focus mainly on Quantity, Price, Spatial competition and Asymmetric Information. Tools used in the book are quite advanced. The good point of the book is strength in precise consideration of price discovery in oligopoly market. (how the price is formed, uniqueness and existence of the solution.) Other topics, e.g. advertising and entry, are not good stated here.

If you are looking for introductory text (advanced undergrates or graduate) in IO, see Tirole 1988. However if you are finding for the advanced books, see Handbook of IO (vol1 for pure theory, vol2 for empirical and extension ;esp. in international aspect of IO) and pick this one (if you are interested in Q, P and Spatialy concepts) also. Enjoy reading...

This book consists of a very useful collection of Putnam-like math problems. Putnam and Beyond is organized for self-study by undergraduate and graduate students who wish to try a lot of competitive math problems.It is also useful for teachers who are preparing their bright students for IMO type (or higher) math competitions. However the book assumes a level of mathematical maturity and prior mathematical knowledge that not many college students possess. Another very useful book for math competitions is The IMO Compendium.

The book's usefulness depends highly on the level of the reader. It is true that the book provides a succinct overview of each topic covered but the problem is that if you are not already familiar with that topic you will not be able to understand it only with the information provided.

Once more another panorama of amazing math problems written by two famous math problemists: Titu Andreescu and Razvan Gelca
Many many congratulations to them for this invaluable treasure of math problems.
I am not absolutely able to describe this excellent book; the best way is purchasing this book. I highly recommend it to all math lovers; in particular to whom are preparing themselves to mathemaical competitions of all kinds.
In fact I do warmly recommand all of the books by Titu Andreescu and his colleagues without exception!!!

Most of the research on school vouchers and charter schools is a matter of dueling statistics. Different authors study the same programs and come to opposite conclusions. Since they all offer elaborate defenses of their methods, making sense out the analyses becomes a matter of statistical nit-picking. Meanwhile, they don't say much about how or why educational competition works. This book approaches the issue from the opposite direction: it doesn't offer any statistical proof of anything, but it provides a challenging look at the reality of educational competition.

What I really liked about this book is that the author doesn't try to prove that school choice does or doesn't work. Instead, he dives into trying to understand how it affects the public schools in the community. Using extensive interviewing, research, and document collection, he offers the deepest look I know of into how school choice competition actually plays out. The reliance on interviews and historical narrative also has the plus of making it much more engaging than the standard analysis of school vouchers. The book also offers some important insights regarding urban schooling and the nature of urban school reform.

This is a book that is definitely worth reading for anyone interested in school vouchers, or even those who just want to learn more about school reform or urban schooling.

Hess explores these issues in a unique and interesting way.

This book provides an evaluation by an educational and governmental researcher of the impact of several schemes of the 1990's setting up voucher and charter schools - paying poor parents if they withdrew their children from inner-city state schools and enrolled them in the private sector. As previous school reform efforts backed by liberal-leftists had failed children, and as court-propelled desegregation led to White flight, many of America's inner-city schools became so appalling that even Democrat-voting Blacks wanted the opportunity to seek private education - and linked up with Republicans to achieve that goal. Frederick Hess's concern here is with the argument of pro-choice campaigners that the new private schools, far from threatening public schools by creaming off brighter children, would actually stimulate much-needed reforms in the public sector; and his strategy is to interview heads, teachers and administrators in three public authority areas which allowed some degree of parental choice - Milwaukee, Cleveland and the Edgewood district of San Antonio, Texas.

Regrettably, Revolution at the Margins says rather more about educational research than about the impact of pro-choice initiatives. Essentially, Hess finds virtually no result at all from competition with the politically well-entrenched public sector. Bureaucrats occasionally mobilized themselves to a little mendacious propaganda (hanging banners outside public schools saying 'High Standards Start Here'), to teaching test-taking strategies to children, and to mounting legal actions to cramp the style of choice schools; but usually there was no action beyond verbal "lashing out" (for example at the "racist and rapacious" proponents of choice). Behind and explaining such inertness lie the 'education systems' of the (Black and Hispanic) slums with their low wages for, and high turnover of teachers. An area that *did* risk union wrath by sacking scores of teachers one spring found it had to re-employ them all, in different schools, by the autumn. Since only idealists and incompetents will work for low wages, yet need self-respect, state teachers would simply shrug off the arrival of competition and continue in their own favoured ("idiosyncratic", says Hess) ways - telling Hess "we have too much on our hands to worry about vouchers and charters" and "you're lucky we're here to provide this service" (even when 40% of state teachers had themselves stopped sending their own offspring to state schools). Quite often, because of high pupil turnover in slum schools, teachers had literally no idea that their school was indeed losing pupils to the private sector. In any case, the size of the challenge in the three schemes studied was slight. Hess concludes that only really large choice schemes will prove sufficiently "fearsome" to make state teachers change; and that, even then, change will be unlikely without background 'institutional reform' needed for the last thirty years but never adopted - notably, giving heads the power to sack weak teachers. State educators are in an impossible position, apparently, after decades of liberal-left misrule. "Imagine," Hess writes, "a private sector producer whose consumers disagree about what kind of product they want; who depends on the support of both consumers and nonconsumers; whose executives are largely unable to evaluate, hire, fire, reward, or sanction employees; and whose product is hard to judge. Any executive, whether Henry Ford, Jack Welch, or Bill Gates - would struggle in the face of such odds." Thus "there was no evidence that competition bulldozed away inefficiencies or forced systemic efforts to reform policy or improve practice, as officials had neither the incentive nor the ability to mount aggressive assaults on organizational culture or procedure."

Yet, as if all this were not depressing enough, Hess's method of arriving at his conclusions will make grown men weep. It is not just that Hess's 'research' involves none of the normal listings of subjects interviewed, questions asked, percentages favouring different answers, etc. Hess is content to provide the kind historical record of developments that could be, and probably was culled from local newspapers - supplemented by a few conversations of his own. This method results in pages littered with dollar signs, numbers and capital letters as the various outlays are made, as votes are taken, and as unions express outrage; but even this is not the worst.

A specialist volume like this should present, first, a testing of whether choice schools produce better end-of-the-year results for pupils than could be expected from their children's starting IQs; and, secondly, a testing of whether such value-added results occur with increasing frequency in state schools after the arrival of private school competition. How else could one possibly say whether either set of schools had truly been doing a good job? Yet test results are scarcely mentioned in this volume, and value-added calculations not at all - and this despite the book being endorsed on its dust jacket by half-a-dozen worthies from the world of educational research. OK, since Hess believes test scores are largely determined by socio-economic circumstances (and never mentions education professor Arthur Jensen), it might have been less problematic for him to ask the children and their parents if they became *happier* as school choice was expanded; but Hess does not even consider, let alone use this humdrum route. Frankly, one wonders what hope there can be for America's children when even a sympathizer with 'choice', as Hess apparently is, cannot imagine and discuss a reasonable way of evaluating the experiment that has been underway in the cities. Hess is right as far as he goes: "So long as school systems are governed by rickety bureaucracies, run by managers bereft of data or tools, staffed by employees who have little motivation beyond the intrinsic, charged with producing ill-defined and ambiguous outcomes, and faced with few penalties for poor performance, efforts at substantive improvement - whether market driven or not - will be stifled." But educational research, too, turns out to stand in similar need of data and re-tooling. One thing is sure: experiments in allowing parental freedom will continue by popular demand so long as educators and educationalists persist in the dismal set of attitudes and practices that this book casually reveals.

The documented theme of David B. Goldstein's "Saving Energy, Growing Jobs: How Environmental Protection Promotes Economic Growth, Competition, Profitability And Innovation" is that those who maintain that the public the government, and the business community, must choose between a healthy environment and a healthy economy is a false choice. Goldstein persuasively presents the view that well-conceived local, state, and federal environmental regulations will create more jobs in the local, state, and federal economies than they will eliminate. An additional benefit is that sound environmental policies will effectively spur the creation of more efficient designs and less expensive products by the regulated industries. "Saving Energy, Growing Jobs" profiles the unexpected success of early energy regulations; reveals how markets actually work and how they fail; exposes the myths of both the environmentalists and the anti-environmentalists; provides a practical model for well-designed environmental policies; and offers guidelines for transforming the current national political debate with respect to environmental regulation to deal with everything from climate change, to pollution controls, to joint international efforts for environmental protections. Of special note are Goldstein's proposals for implementing a combination of incentives and regulations to speed the process of developing sound and effective environmental policies and practices. "Saving Energy, Growing Jobs" is an enthusiastically recommended addition to personal, professional supplemental reading lists, as well as corporate, governmental, academic, and community library Environmental Studies and Economic Studies reference collections.

I agree with just about everything said in the Publishers' Weekly comment cited by Amazon. Read this book better to understand how technology and science can save energy and create jobs, and make the U.S. more competitive with new technologies. Also, however, this book presents valuable insights into how both public agencies and private industries make decisions in this arena. One important message is the reluctance of trade associations to change, and how they often pressure individual companies who might otherwise bring new products and processes to the market.
The main issue I have with this book is that, as written (style), it is heavy going, of interest mostly to readers dedicated to its cause (energy efficiency/new technologies) and folks whose careers are tied to the energy industries. General readers may not be willing to make the effort called for in reading this book.

This is a very frustrating book. David Goldstein gets high marks for his groundbreaking ideas on energy efficiency, but he damages his insights with atrocious writing and research methods. First for the good news. Goldstein bridges the gaps between environmentalists and business interests by ruthlessly debunking the myths that keep both sides from talking to the other. These myths prevent not just understanding, but policies that can both protect the environment and enhance profits. All sides could win if it wasn't for their political ideologies and misperceptions of the other's motivations. Goldstein also illuminates the weaknesses of fundamental economic theory, politicized beliefs in free markets, and opposition to government regulations. Energy efficiency technologies and incentives can clearly bridge these political chasms.

Now for the bad news. The structure and style of this book indicate that Goldstein can't decide who is audience is. Most of the text is addressed to environmentalists and business leaders, but in the introduction Goldstein for some reason tries to please a limited academic audience by claiming that professorial literature on his subject matter is prohibitively scarce. Not only does this alienate 99% of Goldstein's audience, but it's also an insincere apology because there has been plenty of academic research on most of the topics here. It's just outside of economics, the discipline that Goldstein almost exclusively cites (and criticizes). For instance, political economy and critical legal studies are loaded with research on the weaknesses and failures of classical economic theory, but none of it is acknowledged by Goldstein in his misguided attempts to build his own theory. This fractured research focus holds back the full potential of Goldstein's ideas, and prevents him from taking a stand behind his otherwise groundbreaking ideas.

And finally, there is the problematic writing. Goldstein needs an editor to help him stop trying to impress professors and to write for his real audience. The book is slowed down by inelegant, crusty language like "strong theoretical reasons exist to expect the result." And Goldstein severely overuses introductions and summaries (another academic bad habit) to an extent that is downright annoying. Every single chapter starts with several paragraphs on what will be discussed, and ends with several paragraphs that summarize what was discussed and introduce the next chapter that also has its own introduction. Each of the book's three parts has a multi-page introduction that repeats the introductions for each of the chapters, and the final chapter and appendix spend 41 pages largely summarizing the rest of the book. Worst of all are the preface AND introduction which spend 21 pages doing you-know what. This is extremely tiresome for the motivated and interested layperson. By eliminating all of this book's introductions and summaries, it could be much more efficient in size, and in the energy required to produce it. [~doomsdayer520

I have the book and did not find the word "removed." I did find on page 79 "One of the so-called errors of the Western Church was the addition of the words 'and from the Son' (Filioque in Latin)..." Rev. Lovasik says the Council of Canstantinole(381) left the matter opened and the Eastern Church preferred "through" not "from" the Son. I hope Shaky will give the page for the "removed" comment and give the book a second chance.

While I've only browsed through the book, and not bought it, my reason for not doing so illustrate my reason for not doing so.

In recounting the history of the Great Schism of 1054, Fr Lovasik states that the Greeks had *removed* the filioque clause from the Nicene Creed.

In fact, the filioque was not originally part of the Creed, first having been added in 534 at a council in Toledo, the purpose being to combat Islam. The addition was initially opposed by the Roman See, but eventually (8th or 9th century) added, but only in the west. The Eastern Churches rejected, and, for the most part, continue to reject, this addition. Those in communion with Rome, however, regard it as a valid, but non-binding, statement of faith.

Having seen this error in reporting one of the pivotal moments in the Church's history, I found it impossible to consider reading the rest of the book.

The prolific Fr. Lovasik has written a readable, well-organized history of the Church. He covers all the major eras and gives due attention to neglected periods such as late antiquity and the early middle ages. I especially liked his treatment of "new barbarians" like the Scandanavian peoples and their conversion. The book is ideal for junior high to high school age students, though adults would benefit from reading it too.

It's a good book for self defence.Do the moves fast!This book shows you alot of kicks. First I recomend you should get the ``Tao of jeet kune do''By Bruce lee. Then decied what fighting style you want to learn. Every style is about the same. That is the good part of it and bad part of it.No style is better then anouther style it's up to the individual. There's too many factors that could turn in a fight!Nothing could be perfect in a style because as human beings we are not perfect so what we make isn't perfect either. In this case fighting styles!

From warm-ups through to competion sparring, this book covers it all. Each major kick is clearly outlined in a number of pages. The pictures are not 100% clear but all in all an excellent buy.

It is good for starters, but it is difficult to understand from photos the exact movements. Some arrows drawn by hand would do the trick.

People who wish to learn more about Asia won't find much in this book. Apart from some banalities on the Asian way of doing business, the book offers no insights on the economic and social forces that came to shape a new breed of multinationals which are changing the competitive game in the region and globally. The analysis is based on only a handful of examples, none of which is analyzed thoroughly. Although the author argues that there are new Asian kids on the block one needs to pay attention to, many of the big Asian groups that drew media's attention on recent cross-border deals are conspicuously absent.

The main idea of the book is that "winning in Asia tomorrow will require Asian companies to combine their traditional strengths with the best practices from around the world to create new and distinctive Asian multinational companies," and that Western multinational firms, in turn, will have to respond to this challenge. I have no problem with that. But this point is argued again and again in such a repetitive manner that after a while, you wish that the author would have something more to say. Unfortunately he hasn't. Much of the book is only a repetition of this basic tenet.

The book may thus be of limited interest to the general reader and to the Asia specialist. However, it may be of some practical use to the people involved in the drafting of regional strategies for multinational firms operating in Asia. Two lessons particularly stand out. First, as companies in every industry and in different locations tend to exchange differentiated products and services in a process of co-specialization, one winning strategy is to be one piece of this giant jigsaw by focusing on a key resource or activity within the overall supply chain. The caveat is that if you are going to be a specialist piece of a network, you will have to be the world's best because companies won't settle for a second best supplier. The second lesson is to look beyond low-cost manufacturing and to focus on the productivity black spots, such as distribution, logistics and sales systems or administrative services, which are much less efficient than their equivalents in Europe or the US.

I hope that other readers can glean other practical ideas out of reading this book. But don't turn to it if you want to know where Asia is heading, or how it got there.

Winning in Asia is an extremely successful hybrid of academic study and managerial handbook. The author's arguments are backed by strong use of data analysis together with the lighter touch of anecdotal evidence - all written in a style which is highly accessible. The result is a book which stands out from the sea of `Asia management' titles, as having foundation, credibility, originality and a practical purpose!

While the book speaks strongly to managers of Asian companies, it contains equally as thoughtful advice to foreign companies operating in the region (both in terms of what they can expect from local players and how they might start thinking about strategy for the future.). Throughout, the author warns against the commonly held presumption that Asia should and will evolve into something that mimics US-style market capitalism and he paints a convincing picture to back his assertion.

Williamson begins by taking the reader on a brief journey to explore the Asian boom, subsequent crisis and current drivers of change across the region. He then identifies what he sees as the five key challenges for the future: increasing total productivity, innovation, building brands, internationalisation and consolidation.

But before dedicating a chapter to each of the challenges he introduces the reader to Asia as he sees it. And this is as a complex patchwork made up of seven distinct groups - some which are country specific, while others span the region. The characteristics (both good and bad) of these groups are then seamlessly woven into the following chapters in which Williamson first defines the `problem' of each challenge before going on to outline a range of strategies to overcome these.

One of the very appealing aspects of this book is that far from delivering the strategic options in a condescending, prescriptive tone, Williamson discusses the merits and potential drawbacks of each approach, gently prompting the reader to explore new territory.

All-in-all, Winning in Asia is an invaluable book. It's well thought out, well researched and well delivered.

Asia is the happening place in the twenty first century and no business can afford to miss this opportunity. The rapid growth witnessed in the region during the 1990's was suddenly halted by the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Now that the storm is over, a new game has started. This book is about winning this round of the game.

Asia has her own distinctive culture and business traditions, inherent strengths and weaknesses. Till 1997, most of the national economies operated in isolation and local companies enjoyed this protection. Companies resorted to opportunistic diversification, often into unrelated businesses, and profited through rent collection, asset inflation and arbitrage opportunities. The focus of operations was on commoditization and manufacturing efficiencies. Meanwhile one should also recognize the traditional strengths of Asian businesses in terms of building local networks through relationships, speed of response to grab opportunities and adaptation to change.

In the new game post the crisis of 1997, new strategies need to be adopted for success in Asia. This applies to both Asian companies, multinationals operating in Asia and the new alliances that emerge between Asian companies and the big players from outside.

Firstly the national fiefdoms have been broken and Asian countries while attracting foreign investments are also simultaneously encouraging national companies to invest abroad. The Asian customer is also becoming more demanding in terms of variety and quality of goods and services.

The book highlights five major areas that need to be addressed by companies in Asian markets :

1. Step change in productivity - The focus here is on total productivity and not just manufacturing costs, and the need to improve supply chain efficiencies and administrative processes.
2. Innovation - Asia suffers from innovation deficit as shown by the very low investments as percentage of corporate revenues spent on innovation. Asia has traditionally valued investments in tangible assets and not on building intangible assets.
3. Branding - Of the top 60 global brands, only 4 are from Asia - 3 from Japan (Sony, Toyota and Honda) and one from Korea (Samsung). Value creation and capture is the core concept of branding.
4. Creating a new breed of Asian Multinationals - Ability to work across borders as Pan-Asian companies with integrated operations and not just investments abroad.
5. Consolidating the Asian playing field - Ability to shape rather than to be dictated by changes in the new game.

A chapter each is devoted to the topics listed above and the issues are discussed in detail. Excellent examples of some business cases aid the understanding of concepts.

The book is unbiased, objective, well researched and presented in logical steps resulting in a model for strategy formulation for winning in the new Asian game. The scope of this book is largely limited to ASEAN + 3 (China, Japan and Korea). The rest of Asia, India in particular, deserves another book.

While Asia is a new and big opportunity of this century, the author aptly concludes that there will be a sharper divide between winners and losers. This book will certainly help us to be on the better side of this divide.

This book sparked my understanding of "community intelligence" and the need for an integrated network of civic leaders, corporate leaders, academic leaders, and social or non-profit leaders all sharing the same "intelligence" on what the threat to the local community is in terms of losing jobs and remaining attractive as an investment. The author boils it down to each community deciding if it is a thinker, a maker, or a trader community, and then setting out to ensure that everything about the community supports that specific kind of business at a "world-class" level.

The cliché-ridden manifesto on "globalism" has become a staple of our time, with seemingly every consultant, economist and professor spewing out a book or two about the worldwide economy. Few of these authors ever rise above the self-evident and oft-stated themes of wonderful opportunity and mortal danger. But in World Class, author Rosabeth Moss Kanter presents - hold on to your seats - an innovative analysis of globalization's economic and social trends. While the book can't entirely escape the trite "change or die" admonitions of the genre, some of her conclusions truly are original: Companies forced to devote their attention to the global stage will gradually lose interest in their traditional local communities, and those communities will be forced to compete with other localities around the world for the privilege of hosting industry. We [...] recommend this book to any executive or student seeking a non-emotional, fact-based look at the implications of globalism for business and society.

There we many examples of world class communities and how they attract and retain business. That was one of the problems I had with the book. There were just too many examples. A good editor could have cut the size of this book in half. The material contrasting the global view (cosmopolitan) against the local view, was thought provoking.

Alison on the Trail is a very good book book because it's exciting and adventurous. While coming home from school with her friends Megan, Heather, and Keisha, Alison decides to stop by her friendly neighbor Ellie's to go upstairs in her "magic" attic to try on some dress up clothes. Her friends have all been on adventures using the magical mirror in Ellie's attic. When they want to go on an adventure they dress up in clothes,and whatever the outfit goes with (like what time period) the mirror takes them there. When Alison looked into the magical mirror she appeared at a camp and now is a leader of a group of girls. When Alison took her group on the hiking trail there's no telling what's going to happen. I highly recommend you read this book to find out what happens next.

Nothing really happened in this book! Alison was boring, the story was boring. Ahh! I could hardly stand it. Magic Attic really needs to shape up some of their stories, yeah some are for young girls but still they should have some point and not be so predictable. I think you should read American Girl books instead, they have a point and you learn something. They are better written too.