Competitions Books

Frye's study of Elizabeth's struggle to control her iconography and representation is very powerful. She discusses three major events in the course of Elizabeth's reign, and how merchants, courtiers and poets represented Elizabeth through them: praising her glory and virtue, yet simultaneously taking the critical liberties of a patriarchal society over a woman.

Frye's third chapter on "Engendered Violence" is especially revealing, whether or not we can fully accept the extremity of such criticism in the character of Britomart in Spenser's Faerie Queene.

This book is wonderful, a necessary read for anyone interested in the force of gender in the Renaissance.

This book challenged me to think about my own relationship with competition--with my siblings, in my career, during my childhood, and for my future as an entrepreneur--and to recognize competition in settings where I was not recognizing it. In this well written and well referenced book, Mariah gathers together the thoughts of many women and interweaves them successfully with her own powerful experiences. Already I sense that reading this book has made a difference in my life. I eagerly look forward to reading other books by this author.

When THE ENDURANCE HORSE claims to be a "world survey of Endurance Riding from Ancient civilization to Modern Competition" it meant it. The first 9 chapters relate notable endurance riding situations from history, including the Assyrians, Alexander the Great & Bucephalus, and the Mongols. The next section of the book deals with modern day riding. The final section discusses Endurance Riding in various countries. I found the book a good introduction to the subject and the history section a great resource as a writer.

Verdun aims to discover why, given that EMU greatly reduced national sovereignty, there was so little public discussion of its costs and benefits. As she noted of EMU, "This transfer of national sovereignty can arguably be considered to be one of the most far-reaching formal transfers of sovereignty to the European level that the European Community (EC) members have witnessed to date." She studied the ways that central bankers, Ministries of Finance, employers' organisations and trade union leaderships in Britain, France and Germany all perceived EMU. The bankers, Ministries and employers' organisations agreed that EMU would strengthen the market mechanism in Europe. They also agreed that it would assist their efforts to create a single European state. As Verdun observed, "EMU will eventually necessitate more integration of economic, fiscal, social and labour policies." Some quarters of the TUC hoped that associating themselves with the EU's decision-making process would increase their power. But the more the TUC claimed to set the EU agenda on social and employment issues, the more it linked itself to the EU's disastrous impact on Britain's industry and welfare. Some trade union leaders thought that the EU would restore the influence over economic policy-making that they had lost at national level. But cosying up to the employer, whether European or British, weakens our unions, not strengthens us. Some thought that possible gains from the Social Charter would justify the certain losses from labour market flexibility. But who talks about the Social Charter today? Did it save any of the 96,000 manufacturing jobs destroyed in Britain last year? So why was there so little public discussion of EMU's costs and benefits? Verdun does not finally explain, but one suspects that it was because its benefits would accrue only to the ruling classes of Britain, France and Germany, while the public, the vast majority of us who have to work for a living, would suffer all the costs.

Owen Harrison is no longer just the man who wrote the book on Open Space Technology — He’s now the man who wrote the books. Expanding Our Now is Harrison’s second crack at explaining the organizational theory he developed after watching a celebration in an African village. Basically the theory boils down to this: A group will organize itself to solve a specific problem if you sit everyone in a circle and get out of the way. The nuts-and-bolts of this process were described in Harrison’s earlier, Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide. This time around, the author gives us a bit more history and theory. Your reaction to this book will depend to a large extent on how ready you are to accept OST as a concept and how open to new management techniques you are in general. But even if you’re not in the market for newly minted organizational theories, we at getAbstract.com recommend that you read this book, if only to absorb some of its innovative suggestions about how to get the most out of that bane of corporate life — the meeting.

All the technical data, and some racing history. Fair b/w photography

I've played banjo since 1970 and have been through various arguments, discussions and internecine strife between preservationists (of whatever musical stripe) and folks who just want to play music and not argue about it. Fiddling for Norway is the history of how this same attitude happened in Norway. They've had organized fiddle associations to preserve music for a century. And they have two different kinds of fiddles to fight over, as well as three types of music and a desire to honor local traditions. Anyone interested in the problems of preservation and organization (whether musical, religious or whatever) can add this book to his or her library.

The book is somewhat academic but is not dryly written by any means. Goertzen is an American so he's looking at it from the outside and he spends some time describing the situations he finds himself in. He also analyzes the musical styles and examined the history of various controversies through publications. Very well-researched yet still easy-to-read. My favorite quote is when someone suggested gamaldans music is just as valid as the solo fiddle music that apparently arose from wood sprites and waterfalls. The president of the national fiddle association (in 1981) said keeping the styles separate is more a matter of keeping snot off of facial hair. If you've ever run into that attitude in a music association of any stripe, this book will put it in more of a sociological perspective.

It was worth reading and there is a section of sheet music at the end for any fiddler who wishes to try some of the music.

When I first received this book, I had a hard time really making sense of it. At the same time, I purchased a copy of the Figure Live DVD, also by the Figure Coach. After I watched the DVD, the book started to make a lot more sense and became very inspiring for me.

I had read about figure contests in various physique magazines and watched one live show from the audience. However, the combination of the Figure Live DVD and this book gave me much more insight into what's involved in preparing for and competing in a figure contest. Both are presented from a well-informed and also very encouraging perspective for those considering a figure contest. They present a lot of ideas about why it's worth doing, which take the material to the level of being inspiring.

The main reasons I rated this book four and not five stars were the high price and the quality of the book design. I can understand the high price because the potential audience for this book is probably small relative to the production costs. The strength of the book design is the quality of the pictures but the font choices and placement are a little uneven.

That said, I found the materials quite valuable and have already ordered additional items from the Figure Coach.

Since 1966, colleges and universities in the state of Indiana have held a mathematics competition between teams of undergraduate math students. Known formally as the Indiana College Mathematics Competition (ICMC), it is best known locally as the "Friendly" competition. This is due to the emphasis on the social aspects of the event, where faculty and students get together and there is a de-emphasis on the competitive aspects.
It was originally organized as an alternative to the Putnam exam, where the emphasis in the friendly competition was to be on problems at the undergraduate level. This book is a complete listing of all the problems appearing on the exams from 1966 through 2000 and complete solutions to all of the problems are included.
The exams have between 5 and 10 problems, and they cover all aspects of the undergraduate curriculum common to all programs. With the emphasis on being within the reach of the undergraduate student, there is a lot of material that can be used by teachers of mathematics at that level. If you are looking for the right problem to challenge your students or one to present to the class that is outside the general sameness of textbook problems, then this is the place to look. An index of problems grouped by type is included, making the search for specific types of problems very easy.
A discerning brain will also note the change in emphasis as the years progress. While a correct mathematical proof is eternal, how we do those proofs and what proofs we do change over time. Therefore, there is also a bit of a history lesson within the pages.
Any teacher is only as good as the material that they are presenting and you can get some of the best possible material from this book.

Published in the recreational mathematics e-mail newsletter, reprinted with permission.

"Intelligence" in this book is used in its strategic sense - building knowledge of competitors and determining what internal knowledge needs to be protected from others and how to protect it. The book focuses on building competitive advantage through an understanding of intelligence, and integrating this focus with wider aspects of knowledge management. It is therefore centrally concerned with the competitive value of knowledge and the impact of the competitive environment on tools, techniques, organization and protocols for management of knowledge.

The basic thesis of the book is that, in a knowledge economy, competitive intelligence (CI) and the way in which this intelligence is integrated with other aspects of knowledge management (KM) can be an important source of competitive advantage.

The way in which these two complementary elements - CI and KM - should be managed and integrated in turn depends on the intensity of competition, the extent to which that competition is based around knowledge and - in a globalized world - the national and international legislative and regulatory framework within which enterprises are competing.

While issues of intellectual capital and its protection are touched on, this is not the core of the book. Its main focus is on the organization, processes and supporting technology needed to support an effective intelligence and counter-intelligence effort for the organization (and its value chain) in relation to actual and potential competition.

The book will be useful to those concerned with these issues. But it has important gaps. For example, the discussion of counter-intelligence (protecting your own material) does not pay much attention to the extent to which knowledge is held in the heads of employees who may be enticed away and, while it mentions the issue, does not give much guidance on the extent to which professionals may or may not participate in professional forums.