Publications and Media Books

Larry Wallack, Katie Woodruff and Lori Dorfman are recognized experts in media advocacy. This book was a textbook for my media communications course in a graduate school of public health. I would recommend this book for anyone who would like a better understanding of how to work with the media to support advocacy and policy issues, in any subject area. It incorporates a workbook style, with examples of press releases, letters, etc. It's a how-to for hands-on folks. There are also other books focusing on media advocacy, written by Wallack and Dorfman, that I would highly recommend. But News for a Change is an excellent starting point for anyone who needs the media to cover an advocacy/policy issue.

Franklin covers the inside and outside interests, producing the news within the context of British journalism. He allows the reader to enter the mainly confusing arena of the British Press. He covers most avenues, including the relationship between the press and the spin doctors, and takes us up to present day, to the election of Tony Blair and the history of Campbell and his aversion for the media.

The use of 100% organic potting media is one sure way to produce nursery stock with a good, dense fibrous root system. This book is a good "how-to" for nursery managers serious about producing large quantities of compost for their tree nurseries. The book explains why the use of 100% organic mixes is desirable and how to produce them. The book is primarily intended for forest nursery managers in developing countries, but is applicable anywhere.

This book is like a Bibli for papermakers

This text was our assigned text for my Comm class this summer semester. At first I was pretty bored and completely put off by the language and theories. But, after delving into it I find it fascinating. It's well written with good examples and easy-to-follow, real life ideas. Not something I'd read just for the fun of it, but a good text to accompany my class.

Messner basically develops a sociological chart for analyzing writings and activism from men's groups. He reviews the literature in this field over the past three decades. This book will help you to understand much about antisexist men, the Million Man March, gay male pornography, and many other topics. This is definitely one of my favorite men's studies text.

American educators are regularly reminded that the educational systems in other countries do a better job in teaching their students. While it is possible to dispute some of the statistics, the fact is that the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the reminders. One of the best ways to explore the reasons for this is to look at the textbooks being used in other countries.
This book is the U. S. edition of the book used to teach mathematics in the primary grades in Singapore, a nation with a proven track record of educational success. In particular, it is used to teach the third grade. Visual aids are extensively used and the examples are solved in a clear, stepwise manner. Color contrasts of black and pink help highlight the different steps in the problems.
The topics covered are:

*) Mental calculation of basic arithmetic
*) Length in English and metric
*) Weight in English and metric
*) Volume in English and metric
*) Bar graphs
*) Fractions
*) Time
*) Geometry
*) Area and perimeter

I was impressed when reading it and would recommend it to any elementary school teacher. If I had known about it when my daughter was in elementary school, I would have purchased a copy.

Reviewed by Regan Windsor for Reader Views (3/07)

What does the sinking of the Titanic have to do with project management today? Mark Kozak-Holland presents a wealth of information relating the best practices of project management to the pitfalls of the Titanic project.

The Titanic spent four years in development, for only four days in operation. Although the story of these four days is well-known, it is the details of the project from architecture to operation that provides fascinating insight into what ultimately leads to project failure. What lead an unsinkable ship to sink? The same thing that leads today's IT projects to fail - poor decision-making.

The business world of 1909 was not overly different from today - stiff business competitive pressures. What White Star needed was new business strategies that took advantage of emerging technology. By focusing on customer service they wanted to differentiate through increased quality of crossing and customer experience, building the ship based on comfort and space rather than speed. The project had a solid business case and addressed the needs of all three classes of passengers.

Today's IT projects must also ensure due diligence in examining the business problem, articulating competitive services, defining potential costs, and assessing risk. Projects must also determine by segments customer/target audience, value propositions, and create both profiles and scenarios for each of these. Also, establishing desirable service level targets is important for guiding the architecture.

The Titanic architecture stage was solid. Large investments were set aside for state of the art, emerging technology in safety and operations features (non-functional requirements). They also made a shipbuilders model (equivalent to an IT pilot project) and used it to analyze all exposures to the possibilities of loss.

The construction stage integrated many complex technologies and selected safety features to reduce risk. As construction progressed, overconfidence around the abundance of safety designs (non-functional requirements) began to result in a perception that the Titanic was unsinkable.


As the Titanic moved into the design phase some conflicts between functional and non-functional features began to emerge. Decisions were made that compromised individual safety features and escalated the level of risk. Business pressures for the Titanic to go live were enormous due to the large investments tied up in the four-year construction. Sound like some IT projects you know of?!

Due to the pressures the Titanic moved prematurely into the operating stage, where the new pressure became to prove Titanic to be superior to Olympic (its sister ship). And thus the thread of poor decision-making continued. While entering Iceberg Alley, not only did the lookout deck not have binoculars, the bucket test was forged due to rope too short to reach the water, but the ship was actually picking up speed to maintain an unrealistic schedule. While some of these errors occurred due to "skipping out" on the testing phase, the error in judgements that contributed to the crash were a result of business and marketing pressures.

"Project Scapegoats: Lessons from the Titanic Project" is a taping of a lecture by the same name. The DVD also includes on screen slides full of interesting and valuable insights not only on the details of the Titanic project but also the lessons learned in relation to IT projects. Also included in the discussion of each phase of the Titanic from architecture, to construction, planning, testing, and operating are slides covering Best Practices in IT projects. While a couple of slides are blurry or unreadable, the key slides coupled with the lecture information provide an invaluable resource.

"Project Scapegoats: Lessons from the Titanic Project" takes a fascinating historical project and turns it into an interesting and informative lesson in project management.

This will expand your reading horizon by ten-fold. I couldn't read this many books in my lifetime. Russ Kick must be one of the best read people on the planet.

Not every section will be to everybodies taste but the breadth from politix to sex, religion to snuff films is amazing and covers a wide range of cultures and countries.

The reviews may sometimes seem just a touch judgemental, however their scope provides enough for you to make up your own mind on any subject.

The buying instructions and publishers info is invaluable, as with the feature pubilcation many are now out of print.

A book well worth the time to find a copy of.

For anyone interested Polyester Books in Fitzroy (Melb, Aust) may have one or two copies.

This is an excellent book that sheds light on some of the realities of television news and its perpetuation of various levels of racism. It critically examines news stories from TV affiliates around the country and exposes traditionally accepted TV news practices, evoking serious ethical questions. I will never be able to watch local news in the same way. Some of the examples are truly shocking.


This book is excellent!